Can you explain instagram to me...

I have a twitter account because I use it to follow American political commentators... I don't tweet.

Lots of these link to instagram accounts.... the thing I notice about them is that there is about 3 times the volume of users on instagram, so if someone has 1million followers on twitter they have 3 million on instagram.... also the "likes" on instagram... honestly 10 million people liking some random photo of someone's thanksgiving dinner.... way more than the number of followers they have.... how did the other 7million see that? 

please explain instagram because for it to work the whole world and Mars seems to be spending every waking day liking stuff.

It really confuses me... it just CAN'T be as active as it says.

 

 

 

Your Twitter news feed shows you tweets and retweets by people you are already following. If you want to see tweets using a particular hashtag you have to search for it.

On Instagram your home page show you people you are already following but if you click on the search button it shows you thumbnails of things it thinks you will like, based on what you've already liked. If you click on one of those images then the first thing you see is the full version of that image, and then as you scroll down it shows you other similar images.

So for example, if I go onto Instagram right now and click on the search button, it's showing me thumbnails of a video of someone making an omelette, some Christmas cookies, a photo of the inside of the Natural History Museum, a cat video and various other things. If I click on the Natural History Museum, I scroll down and get an aerial view of St Pancras and more London architecture. If I click on the cat video, I get more cats.

I think it makes you see more pictures and videos and see them quicker. You can like a picture of a cat quicker than your brain can process a tweet and decide whether to like it or retweet it. Also, on Twitter everything you retweet appears on your own timeline so if you tweet too much you're spamming all your own followers, whereas Instagram is a much more simple "do I like this or not" type reaction.

I like it because I can share photos on social media without spamming people who aren't really interested, like my Facebook friends. And while I'm on there, it shows me kittens and snowy mountains and food and nice archictecture in a way which is quite nice and relaxing. I never feel like I need to step away from Instagram for the sake of my own sanity.

But I'm already a member of a whole raft of sailing groups on Facebook that are genuinely interesting.  The best are those for people looking for crew or crew looking for boats and don't think they'd work on Instagram.

I like Instagram a lot. It's very low effort, you only have to engage with it as much as you want to. It doesn't feel toxic or compulsive in the same way Twitter can. 

As Lady P said it's MUCH better than any of the other social networks at showing you content you'd enjoy but isn't from people you follow. 

It's also the only place where my friends and family actually share anything from their life these days, no-one posts anything to Facebook and definitely none to Twitter.