What do people use Instagram for these days?

I was wondering what would happen if the network of filtered-image sharers went down? If we can’t share a vintage-style photo of our Starbucks red cup, did we really have it at all? How will my followers know that I saw a sunset? And where would we be without the stream of ‘selfies’ from people we haven’t actually seen for months?

My Instagram feed is full of people who take travel photos and portraits, with a sprinkling of branded caffeine updates. Although I think I could just about live without them.

There will soon be in-network advertising rolled out to monetize the content, as well as an already controversial ruling to allow brands to find and use the publicly available images for their products.

At it’s inception, Instagram was a fascinating look into people’s lives, through a series of retro and distorted lenses. Twitter and Facebook didn’t give the option to enhance the images within the website, in fact we didn’t even need to be a part of those. Now we could follow people who were posting the kinds of photos we liked, all sorted by hash-tagged keywords. Since Twitter stopped allowing Instagrammed pictures to be embedded into Tweets, and Facebook bought the network for a cool $1 billion, is there any use for it?

In it’s favour is that you can search for, and follow celebrities, friends and families and follow images posted from their mobile devices. However you can also do that on every single network you’re also on. Some brands have tried to make it work, although alongside Pinterest, the audience has a specific demographic and will struggle to reach mass appeal.

Do you have time for Instagram? Is it just another network to keep updated or do you separate the content you’re sending out, depending on where your niche is?

Leave your comments below. Thanks

-originally posted in November 2013 by James R.C. Smith