One of the social media success stories of 2011 was easily the photo-sharing app Instagram. Despite only running on Apple ‘iDevices’, Instagram boss Kevin Systrom reckoned he had 16+ million users at Christmas.
Post Christmas sign-ups combined with Apple naming Instagram app of the year means that total is probably not far off 20 million by now. And the company estimates that the Android version finally in the works will result in the numbers doubling.
One of the most interesting things about Instagram, is its community, which unlike many other early stage social networks doesn’t consist exclusively of people who work in tech or marketing.
Thanks to Instagram allowing its users the kind of freedom Facebook won’t, that community has also created a fairly unique sub-culture, which it is worth any marketer understanding:
The etiquette of posting and hash-tags
Instagram has often been described as a visual Twitter. Like Twitter, most feeds are ‘open’ and you don’t have to follow someone for them to follow you.
Like Twitter, you refer to other users by putting an @ in front of their username. And like Twitter, hash-tags are added to posts to denote topics.
However, as Instagram users aren’t restricted to 140 characters, a lot of hash-tags can be added – up to 30. As a result, it is worth knowing what a giant list of hash-tags under someone’s post actually means.
They will denote one of several things:
- • The 3rd party app used to edit the photo There is now a whole eco-system of iPhone compatible camera apps, for example #lenslight, #snapseed or #dynamiclight
- • The location, e.g #london, #londonlife or #thames
- • If the image is being tagged against a competition, for example #instahub or #prestige_challenge01
- • The situation, one example is pictures of people on public transport – #sneakycommutershot
- • Whatever is being taken #airplane, or (in 6600+ cases!) #powerlineporn
- • Finally, images are often tagged against Instagramer groups – #igerslondon, #rebelseurope, #implus More on these in a minute
