Re: Facebook Fate
I get why many people don't understand Instagram's appeal. If you are primarily a FB user, IG doesn't add much to the experience except those trippy filters that make your food look gross but your sunsets look great.
If Twitter's constantly-updating stream of personal updates never grabbed you, you certainly wouldn't be grabbed by Instagram either, at least as it was in its earlier incarnation. But I got sucked in because my Instagram "friends" were mostly my Twitter friends, and scrolling through a day's worth of my Instagram stream was a chance to see a slideshow of what my friends had seen and done that day. As @emilychang said just over two years ago, it was basically visual Twitter.
THAT was its appeal, I think, for many of us.
I get that most of you don't really care what your friends and acquaintances had for dinner or what their office desks looked like at work today or what the skyline view was from their spot in afternoon traffic. I think that was made clear in our initial discussion of Twitter six years ago. But I'm still a fan, all these years later. What Instagram did (and other photo-sharing apps did not) was make it really, really easy to share photos, to leave comments on photos, and to "like" photos in the quick-and-sometimes-crude way that Twitter allowed us to share whatever was on our minds. For many, IG became the social media platform of choice, a place where friendships were made and conversations held away from Twitter, FB, and other platforms. It was always more supplementary to me--I don't think I ever posted a photo on IG that wasn't meant primarily to be shared with Twitter--but "visual Twitter" seemed to be enough for a lot of users. The connectivity with others made rabid fans of many of its users.
My fondness for the app would never go that far, but I get it.
I get why many people don't understand Instagram's appeal. If you are primarily a FB user, IG doesn't add much to the experience except those trippy filters that make your food look gross but your sunsets look great.
If Twitter's constantly-updating stream of personal updates never grabbed you, you certainly wouldn't be grabbed by Instagram either, at least as it was in its earlier incarnation. But I got sucked in because my Instagram "friends" were mostly my Twitter friends, and scrolling through a day's worth of my Instagram stream was a chance to see a slideshow of what my friends had seen and done that day. As @emilychang said just over two years ago, it was basically visual Twitter.
THAT was its appeal, I think, for many of us.
I get that most of you don't really care what your friends and acquaintances had for dinner or what their office desks looked like at work today or what the skyline view was from their spot in afternoon traffic. I think that was made clear in our initial discussion of Twitter six years ago. But I'm still a fan, all these years later. What Instagram did (and other photo-sharing apps did not) was make it really, really easy to share photos, to leave comments on photos, and to "like" photos in the quick-and-sometimes-crude way that Twitter allowed us to share whatever was on our minds. For many, IG became the social media platform of choice, a place where friendships were made and conversations held away from Twitter, FB, and other platforms. It was always more supplementary to me--I don't think I ever posted a photo on IG that wasn't meant primarily to be shared with Twitter--but "visual Twitter" seemed to be enough for a lot of users. The connectivity with others made rabid fans of many of its users.
My fondness for the app would never go that far, but I get it.
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