Instagram is a social network very popular among young people that offers the possibility of sharing photos with other users and receiving comments or “likes” from your followers. Within these photos that we can upload, we can add tags or hashtags to categorize them according to the type of photo or what can be seen in it, making it easier to classify them when searching for a specific topic.
Initially created exclusively for iPhone, Instagram launched on Apple’s App Store in October 2010, and it wasn’t until April 2012 that the final Android app was released, achieving over a million downloads in its first 24 hours. Its success was so great that Facebook quickly became interested in the app and social network and decided to acquire it. In 2016, Instagram released its Windows 10 app, although it didn’t initially allow users to upload photos.
The social network works like any other; we can add users as followers and share photos with these followers or with the entire social network, according to our privacy preferences. Considering the large number of users— 1 billion active at the end of 2018 —our photos can reach the eyes of many users, so it is advisable to manage the privacy options it offers well.
This social network is overshadowing the two most popular messaging apps, although it’s not specifically dedicated to messaging. It also has features for private chat communication called Instagram Direct, and we can make calls and even video calls. Instagram is a comprehensive and widely used social networking app, especially among teenagers, and it has a vast number of photos that we can view and “like.”
What is Instagram for?
Instagram is used to upload photos from our mobile phone so that all our followers can see, comment on, or like them. The photos cover a wide variety of topics, and we can tag them according to location, content, or our mood. This allows us to share aspects of our daily lives with our followers and friends at any time, and we can even share them with a live broadcast.
We can also use Instagram as a means of communication although we can draw a parallel in that if we upload a photo with comments our followers and friends can see it, as if we were writing in a public chat, we can also have private chats with our friends and followers that we have added, or we can simply make calls or video calls with up to 50 people nothing to envy from other applications.
Another useful feature of Instagram is the multitude of filters it offers for the camera. We can take a photo and apply one of the many available filters to personalize it. In addition to filters, the mobile app offers the option to add frames, text, retro colors, and more. Once we’ve made the desired modifications to our photo, we can upload it and tag it with a hashtag so other users can see it.
More recently, Instagram launched Instagram Stories, which offered the ability to share photos with different effects, text, and other drawings in a short story format with your followers. These stories lasted a maximum of 24 hours before disappearing, providing a way to share special moments with other users. Not long after, the option to include videos instead of photos was added, along with the ability to modify and edit these videos by adding text, images, augmented reality stickers, or face filters, making these stories a bit more fun. In 2017, the option to create a permanent Story was also introduced, this time without an expiration date.
Basically, Instagram is used to express our special moments through photos or videos with multiple editing options and filters, and to share them with the rest of our followers.s
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