Trending conversations, hashtags and instant lifestyle-updates might have been made popular by social media giant Twitter, but it seems Instagram has taken it one step further. Why though, has Instagram grown so fast in such a short time?
According to Instagram’s CEO Kevin Systrom, the image-based social tool now has around 300 million users, giving it almost 20 million more than Twitter. Although nowhere close to Facebook’s 1.3 billion users, Instagram has picked up massive pace in growth.
The image and video sharing platform, which was bought by Facebook in 2012 for USD$1billion in cash and stock, currently garners around 70 million photos and videos per day, that’s a hell of a lot of #selfies and #InstaFood tweets. Why though, has Twitter slowed down so much and Instagram gained so much momentum?
While Twitter has become something of a melange of news and adverts, Instagram maintains a purist appeal; it’s all about the photo, not so much the content. This, of course, appeals to far more people than Twitter’s more ‘involved’ process.
Twitter is restrictive, Instagram lets you do whatever you want. Snap, choose filter, write as much as you want… post to Twitter and Facebook at the same time. Done.
Lately, Twitter has become more of a spammy mess than having chosen content show up on your news stream. This has, to a certain extent, led to people abandoning the clutter for a more visually appealing platform with more exclusivity and very little spam.
While Instagram is far from spam-free, Systrom has recommitted the company to rooting out spam and ensuring an exclusive user experience.
Lesson to learn here: treat everything the way Systrom treats social media; a little goes a long way, don’t clutter people’s timelines with unsolicited sh*t every other minute.
IMAGE: By Chukcha / Shutterstock.com