An Innovative Instagram Use Case
I’m late to the Instagram party (I define late as discovering my first name has already been claimed as a username; if you’re curious I’m grabbed Tylda instead) and I’m hooked. Its simplicity makes discovering images a joy and its community is overwhelmingly positive, lacking the anonymous trolls that usually plague public comment threads.
And, while photos can be posted to multiple other social networks, those connections are not visible to other users, putting the focus squarely on photography. On Instagram, who you are is defined only by how you see the world, a refreshing departure from most social networks profiles.
Most people share photos and interact with others through comments and likes. One user, @assingm3nt, innovatively built a community around his account, posting topics for photo contests to his followers and highlighting the most interesting submissions with a followup photo:
Instagram might not have predicted this use case. That’s one of the fun surprises about building something: You never know how users will interact with your product. If you listen, you can find inspiration to improve, or just enjoy the innovation.