News and Instagram KIARA DUFORD 4/19/2016

Background Information

Instagram was founded by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in October 2010.

In 2012 Instagram was bought by Facebook. Instagram is the number 1 photo social platform and has a community

of 300 million. Timeline- http://wersm.com/the-complete-history-of-instagram/

What’s the ‘Gram?

Instagram is a mobile social-networking app where you can share videos and photos publically or privately.

Similar to Twitter and Snapchat, everyone must create their own account and have a timeline. Your post will display on your profile. You can follow, comment and like others post.

Instagram has editing features, such as filters and cropping, for your posts you choose to upload.

Strengths

You can make your profile public or private. You can follow pages to keep up with their posts. Searchable Hashtag: if you are looking for posts pertaining about a

particular thing you can search by hashtags. Notification Alerts: who liked and comment on posts. Direct Messaging You can report offensive posts. Discover/ Popular page (later post)

Weaknesses

Focus more on personal use rather hard concrete news. Crop editing can ruin your post and must use additional app to resize

picture or video. A lot of fake profiles to catfish other users. You can purchase likes and followers. Cyberbullying.

Instagram and the News

There are news such as CNN that use Instagram as a platform however there are a lot of Instagram pages that predominately focus on “soft news” and celebrity gossip. EX; The Shade Room.

A lot politicians and Reporters have Instagram pages. Explore and Popular page https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=aG8bkBxi2j8

Comments and Critiques

Instagram is not the first place I would run to, to receive news. I use this app to catch up on gossip and watch funny videos.

Instagram is one of the great ways to visually connect with friends and I like that I have the option to make my profile private.

The age range I would suggest for Instagram target users is from (16-29)

Its very easy to use. There should be more concrete news along with the gossip.