I can’t remember the last time I bring a physical camera to take pictures with my friends. I believe my generation born in the late eighties or early nineties may have had the delightful experience of successfully loaded a roll of 35mm film to a physical camera. What followed was the digital cameras, where we discovered for the first time, the wonderful ‘delete’ feature which ensures that unflattering pictures would never see the light of day.
Then came the smartphones, which covered all my basic needs including photo taking. I no longer feel the necessity to own a digital camera.
Take one of the strongest photo-taking / social networking app, Instagram for example. If you are on the Instagram platform, it is likely that you have been documenting memorable moments of your living experience.
The amazing thing about Instagram is this — increasingly it has evolved to become a new form of visual journal or visual blogging platform. It provides everyone the opportunity to jot down our daily musings in a visual way, and present our stories to a highly engaging and tight-knit Instagram community.
Less than a week ago, Kevin Systrom, CEO of Instagram announced that the service now has a network of more than 300 million active Instagrammers per month — compare to 284 million monthly active Twitter users.
The numbers alone are impressive: 70 million photos shared each day, and over 30 billion total photos have been shared to the platform.
Why would Instagram have a stronger user growth and retain more active users compare to Twitter? Without a doubt, strong visual elements are considerably more appealing than a primarily text driven platform. I read through my Twitter feed at least 10 times a day because I have great interest in fresh content about technology, entrepreneurship and businesses - but that is not necessarily applicable to every other netizens.
The amazing thing about these online platforms? They are versatile and offer much more than just connecting people. Life is as good as we make it, the same goes to people and services we interact with on a daily basis.
How do we make the most out of the platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram? Platforms which we have been spending most of our precious time on?
Have you heard of Instagrammers who landed themselves job offers and partnership opportunities? Think about it. If there is one thing you are very interested in materialising, how can the Internet and new technologies help you?
May this be the food for thought.
CEO of Instagram, Kevin Systrom spoke at Startup School Silicon Valley 2014.
