Why I love Instagram
Or, the hidden side of this famous social media platform.
‘Hi, my name is Julia, @aprendizdeamelie and I’m addicted to Instagram’. This could be the way I’d use to introduce myself to an Instagram Addicted Anonymous group.
Anyway, what I’m going to explain isn’t the common news you can find about Instagram. I’ll talk about the economic side, or the potential that Instagram has for brands and businesses, on other posts.
First of all, I want to state that I don’t work for Instagram/Facebook (I’d wish!). Please, don’t get confused. I’m just a passionate photographer, a lover, and a heavy user of it, and an Instagram marketing consultant. The truth is that, for one or another reason, I spend a lot hours a day on it since 2012.
Most of the times, when the media put an eye on this social network, besides the economic part, is to announce a picture posted by a celebrity, the last fashion trendy style, or the importance of ‘selfies’ in our society (I know, this deserves a post itself).
There’s often a subtle negative or pejorative way of treating Instagram that doesn’t so frequently repeat when dealing with other social media platforms. I usually say, ironically, when talking about Instagram: ‘Oh, yes, Instagram. That place for teens, nails, selfies and kitties’.
Well, I’m in my late thirties and I don’t see on my timeline nails, teens, or kitties. Yes, even kitties. I’m not a big fan of cats on the Internet.
Instagram, as every social network, is what you want it to be.
I’m on Instagram from the second day after it was launched on the Apple Store on October 6th, 2010. I uploaded my first pic two days after. The pic is still posted right now. It’s almost like a museum piece. Kevin, Mike and other 23,002 people were there when I joined Instagram. That’s almost 5 years now. It’s really a long time. I think I can affirm I know Instagram pretty well, both the good and the bad aspects of it.
I’ve never abandoned the platform for long periods of time, I’m not ashamed of my past and my dear blurred pics taken with the 3GS are still hanging on my profile. Through this time, I’ve made different approaches to the app. I’ve gone through different stages; using it as a journal of my daily life, realizing about the potential of mobile photography in 2012. The last stage began when I was included by the app on the Suggested Users list on February 2014. This is where I am now.
Instagram is, in my opinion, the most ‘emotional’ social network.
Disclaimer: I’ve been a user of almost all of them. Can you imagine I used Path for a long period of time?
My online activity was mainly on Twitter from 2008–2012. I had an intense activity on it, I devirtualized a lot of people, I went to many Twitter meetings, I made true friends, and I also had different kinds of relationships (no more details) that started with a Direct Message. But Instagram is different, not only because of its visual aspect, which is obvious, but also for this sentimental side.
At first and for one year and a half, it was just a mobile photography network for iPhone users (oh, those times!).
Always speaking from the perspective of the kind of IG user that I am right now, the emotional aspect is so intensively lived on IG. Friendships are stronger. Hates, too. There are lots of non-written rules inside the community. Although we sometimes deny it, we fight for being featured on hubs and for winning prices in a sometimes insane way. We take so seriously any change of the TOS (Terms of Service) or even if there’s a change in the service, as the recent change in the rules of tagging. The sense of community is as hard as making programmed protests against spam, for example (it has already happened 2–3 times). People outside IG can’t understand this.
Imagine Facebook or Twitter users making a protest when there’s a change in the services or the TOS. It’d be a non-stop protest.
The #communityfirst idea is always present.
#Communityfirst is a tag introduced by the IG community team via the official blog and profile on the app in 2014. And I can assure you that the IG team has reached the goal. It was an impulse for what previously existed, it has endured it.
According to the ‘Instagram official book’, ‘Community first’ is one of its inspiring values.
The book says about it: ‘Instagrammers are passionate and look to the rest of the community for inspiration. Many form friendships that lead to real-world meet-ups where they connect over their love for photography’.
There are also some communities inside IG that deserve a special treatment. For example, the ‘Instagramers’ network, founded by Phil Gonzalez in 2011 is a network of little communities with their own activities and meetings in cities all over the world.
There’s also a community which is special for many reasons: The JJ community is the oldest and biggest one. Created by Josh Johnson at the very beginning of IG, currently, the CEO is Kevin Kuster and it has 633 K followers now. Its motto is ‘Create to connect’. There’s a daily forum on IG about a theme, where thousands of people take part to be featured on the main feed. Sponsors haven’t totally discovered the real potential of a community like this. If IG itself already has a strong sense of community, this sense is even much stronger inside the JJ community. From time to time, there’s an event that makes this connection grow suddenly and exponentially in a very short period of time. This has happened last weekend.
I know people help each other through Facebook or Twitter and there are also platforms as Change.org that have a similar function, but the way this happens on Instagram is simply awesome.
In the last 3 years, there have been many social and charity causes supported by the JJ community, as the ones in favor of Watts of love. But the most special actions have taken place when a member of the community has been in real need.
Last week, a great photographer and a person who has an important role in the JJ community, the Spanish Fran García @instafraner, wrote two posts on his feed asking for help. He asked for a job in the new town where he and his whole family have to move because of the treatment of his 4-year-old son with cancer.
He hadn’t asked for it, but it happened. There was a fundrising campaign reaching $15,000 in one day and a half. Including an anonymous donator of $10,000 who left everybody astonished.
He can fully dedicate now to his family at least for some time. We couldn’t do anything for the kid’s health but WE (the community) tried to relieve them from one of their worries. I know these expressions may sound religious, and perhaps it’s true. These digital communities are in some way the ‘religions’ of our time.
I have a sentence that I like to use in these cases. And I’ve used it a lot in the last years: ‘Instagram will never stop surprising me’.
Stories like these don’t appear at media. Could this be because the good side of Instagram doesn’t sell?
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