[ronhav3]

I've been on Instagram for a year, and I still don't get it.

I've gotten to a 1000 followers by regularly adding photos from my travels. I get a few hundred likes per photo and a couple of dozen of generic comments.And the occasional DM. Is this it ? Even by the standards of social media, it feels very superificial to me.

Facebook 10 years ago was much more exciting.

[wanderr]

Everyone uses social media differently I guess, but in my case I almost exclusively follow and am followed by people who I know. I intentionally don't tag my posts. I love it this way. I get to see what my friends are up to, and share bits of my life with them as well. I am not happy with the non linear ordering change as it seems to prefer showing me things I've already seen above stuff I haven't, but even so Instagram is much more conducive to sharing photos and viewing them than FB ever was.

[Ninjalicious]

You're not engaging deeply. I find myself in these insane microcosms of things I'm interested in, where people are deeply engaged in creating new and interesting content. I follow artists, designers, fashion, extreme sports, my friends, brands, everything. It's a photo blog in a Twitter style rapid fire format, where everyone is an equal because we all have to create good and interesting comment. There's no way to hide behind words, your content has to be good. And people notice. I've learned so much just from videos of artisans and artists posting how-to and process clips. It's the one thing Twitter should have done but never could have. It's short form blogging in visual form, for me, it just works and I get a lot out of it every damn day.

[personlurking]

I've tried and failed (9.9x out of 10) to use the site for discovery...of anything interesting. For a site with so much content (media), it seems so void of content (significance, meaning).

[dmark3]

I suppose it makes more sense if you have business to promote, or are one of those people trying to be become "influencers" and sell access to their account.

[psyc]

I don't get it either. I can only assume it's either a generational thing, or me not understanding things most people like. I've gone back, looked at, and tried to understand it several times, and I just can't see why I'd want to look at it or use it.

"I want everybody to see this photo I took"

"Cheers, I have seen your photo"

I guess that's extremely compelling to folks.

[ryanwaggoner]

"I want everyone to read this comment I wrote."

"Cheers, I have read your comment."

[psyc]

That illustrates what I'm getting at, because I can't see the similarity. When I read a comment, I can become informed about something or be challenged. When I see someone's photo of just about anything ... that's where I draw a blank. It would be a different story perhaps if I took the time to curate a follow-list that was all computer graphicists and mathematicians, but that's what I use Twitter for.

[cmehdy]

Building a list of interesting people to follow is the biggest part. Keep in mind that this is visual communication, so there will definitely be a bias towards photographers, artists, journalists.. Not everyone is able to communicate visually well either, and the format prevents long textual explanations and favours a more emotional response.

National Geographic has a few accounts (natgeo, natgeocreative..), NASA shares interesting tidbits about current missions, Magnum photography has interesting pieces of visual journalism, many unknown journalists use it to explore projects that do not always resonate with current trends in the media/their workplace.. There's decent content on Instagram, although it isn't easy to find.

[ryanwaggoner]

Informing or challenging is a tiny fraction of the different reasons to communicate.

[CuriouslyC]

Comments are more likely to be a vehicle for raising awareness about something meaningful than pictures.

[ryanwaggoner]

I don't know that I would state it so strongly, but regardless, most of life isn't about raising awareness of meaningful things, and probably shouldn't be.

[carlesfe]

That's where new generations disagree with you :)