Instagram: Inspiring the creative in all of us
When it comes to choosing our favourite social media platforms, Instagram has got to be up there in terms of those that have emerged relatively recently. We at The Practice love anything that mixes the social with creative, so naturally this is a unanimous firm favourite!
It’s arguably turned the world into a collective body of amateur photographers, and even taught novices a thing or two about the rules of the discipline. So we were baffled to hear yesterday’s news that Instagram has decided to disable support for Twitter cards. This means that any photos taken on Instagram will cease to show in Twitter. Apparently, Instagram’s decision was made in order to boost traffic and prompt users to focus on its own newly improved site, rather than due to Facebook’s interference, as previously thought.
For us at The Practice and many other users, Instagram and Twitter have always been compatible; naturally Twitter fans love to post links and share photos via tweets- take this away and the micro-blogging site is set to be a much less colourful platform. For Chrome users however, there’s a simple way around this- installing the extension InstaTwit allows removed photos to re-appear on Twitter feeds once again.
The question is, do we think Instagram will lose a number of Twitter users who photograph solely to tweet their images? Perhaps a small number will be put off, but Instagram is so entertaining in its own right that we can’t foresee too much of a problem. Having further explored the realm of Instagram lately, we were left fascinated by the platform’s blog, and the number of projects, challenges and pictorial content that it showcases; it’s certainly one of the most user-friendly and engaging platforms. For instance, we love Instagram’s weekend challenge entitled the Weekend Hashtag Project which outlines a particular theme for users to snap and submit including the relevant hashtag (in this case #WHP), followed by the category. Last weekend’s theme was ‘waterdrops’, and the previous weekend’s was #WFPfiftyfifty, a novel idea imploring users to capture only half the subject in their images.
And Instagram’s also been keen to join in the Christmas spirit by launching its Advent Calendar contest entitled ‘24 Grams,’ encouraging users to submit photos for a festive project whereby certain images will represent each day of December. Instagram has asked users to pick a day and submit any photos which interpret the respective numbers; for example the 2nd of December is characterized by two Wellington boots, whilst the 9th is represented by a cat’s tail curled up like the figure itself. And the incentive? The winners will receive a personal gift from Instagram, as well as having their entry showcased on the calendar. Clearly, there’s so much fun to be had that there’s no need to stop using Instagram just because we can no longer post our snaps via Twitter!
Do you use Instagram, or do you prefer some of the other photo-sharing platforms such as Hipstamatic? And do you think Instagram’s latest move will deter Twitter users from snapping away if they have one less outlet to showcase their pictures? We’d love to hear your comments, so please tweet to us @PracticeDigital and connect with us on Facebook.