The iPhone toy camera app Hipstamatic has just laid off three developers, a designer, and a writer, according to a former employee and as reported by TechCrunch and The Next Web. The laid-off employees are irked and are being pretty vocal. "And to be frank this is the best thing, it became apparent that we were spiraling the drain," former Hipstamatic developer Jonathan Wight tweeted today.

Still, it's impossible to deny that Hipstamatic has been eclipsed by the breakout success of its (free) competitor Instagram. Today Instagram released version 3.0 to its 80 million users as Facebook jockeys to close its $1 billion acquisition of the company. Meanwhile, Hipstamatic's former employees are bitterly job hunting via Twitter.

"We are definitely not winding down, and are very much here to stay," Molli Sullivan, Hipstamatic's director of communication, told The Verge in an email. "It is not true that the entire tech team was laid off, and the original team that built Hipstamatic is still hard at work, making products for the world and our awesome community."