Insta-Nation: The Ever-Growing Dominance of Instagram over the Social Scene
Instagram was originally purchased for over $1 billion by the Facebook Incorporation, and it has continued to become one of the worlds most active forms of social media today. Countless people use this mobile app to engage in photo sharing, direct messages, commenting, “liking”, and following.
This ever-growing mobile app has literally taken over the world of social media. It takes the idea of Facebook and combines it with Pinterest to bring photo sharing to the mobile world. One thing that has enhanced the growth of Instagram is how it is a mobile app, and mobile apps are all the rage, especially since as of 2014 more than 2 thirds of Americans own smartphones.
A huge decline of Facebook users throughout the ages of 13-18 has grown. Multiple teenagers and young adults are leaving the Facebook platform and sacrificing it to utilize apps like Instagram mainly because older people are beginning to open up Facebook accounts while the Insta platform is somewhat focused towards the younger crowd. Around 53% of young adults around the age of 18-29 based on research are using Instagram actively.
With Instagram, the statistics of growing teenagers using the app and adults as well are growing. It was announced in December of 2014 that Instagram has a consistent growth of 300 million active users, which is a 50% increase from exactly nine months earlier.
Images and the use of visual properties are growing to be the ultimate trend, especially since creating statuses on Facebook and even creating short messages on Twitter are beginning to fade away.
Instagram utilizes the simple idea to stay up to date with other people outside of your circle of friends. Instagram allows users to follow their favorite celebrities, public figures, and of course their closest friends and family, but it does so without having to read or go through short updates and quotes like Facebook. Users enjoy getting updates through visuals like short 15 second videos and photos.
When a person enjoys a video or picture, they tap it twice to “Like” the photo, and their followers get updates on their timeline to see that they “liked” the photo. You can also view via the search function what the people you are following are “liking”. It is an interesting social network, and Instagram continues to grow with new changes and stronger developments to engage their users with an easy platform to share updates in their life through the power of photos and short videos.
