Text technology: Photography
Case Study: Instagram
According to the Instagram website, Instagram is a fun and quirky way to share your life with friends through a series of pictures. Snap a photo with your mobile phone, then choose a filter to transform the image into a memory to keep around forever. "We're building Instagram to allow you to experience moments in your friends' lives through pictures as they happen. We imagine a world more connected through photos."
Instagram is a simple photo-taking and photo-sharing app for taking pictures, adding filters to make them look professional, and then for sharing them with sites like Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, and Facebook.
It is also a simple social network of other people's photos. You can "like" or comment on the photos, and see what's new with your friends. It's easy and doesn't take much time or effort. This is one of the reasons it has become so popular so quickly.
Instagram is a simple photo-taking and photo-sharing app for taking pictures, adding filters to make them look professional, and then for sharing them with sites like Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, and Facebook.
It is also a simple social network of other people's photos. You can "like" or comment on the photos, and see what's new with your friends. It's easy and doesn't take much time or effort. This is one of the reasons it has become so popular so quickly.
Bibliography
- http://www.businessinsider.com/instagram-2010-11?op=1
- http://instagram.com/about/faq/
- http://blog.brandyourself.com/brand-yourselfcom/what-is-instagram-and-how-to-overcome-its-biggest-shortfall/
- http://royal.pingdom.com/2013/01/16/internet-2012-in-numbers/
Research Questions
1. How does Instagram promote the sharing of photos?
2. How does Instagram change the way you take pictures?
3. What Medium must you have to use this technology?
4. How many photos have been uploaded to Instagram since its start? Every Second?
5. What does this mean for our study of text technologies?
- It is not only a photo capturing and editing tool, but also has a built in social media network to add friends and look at their uploaded pictures.
2. How does Instagram change the way you take pictures?
- Instagram adds a filter function that makes any "normal" picture look like a professional picture. It makes taking pictures more fun for the average photographer.
3. What Medium must you have to use this technology?
- Instagram is made for smart phones. I.e. iPhone, Android, Blackberry, etc
4. How many photos have been uploaded to Instagram since its start? Every Second?
- The total number of photos uploaded to Instagram since its start is 5 billion. Every second, 58 photos are uploaded worldwide.
5. What does this mean for our study of text technologies?
- More photographs have been taken in the past year than in the previous thousand years combined. New technologies are promoting and changing the way we view photography as a text technology. Applications like Instagram and Snapchat are only the first in a wave of many new technological changes to come.