Instagram?

[HikinMike]

Well, whatever you do, do NOT steal your tweenage daughter's iPod and start "liking" every photo in her Instagram feed. Apparently it turns her into mega-geek, and you into the worst.mom.ever! :mrgreen:

Both of my kids are on Instagram and I thought about stalking them, but I didn't want to be "that Dad".

 

[Overread]

Fact - if parents stalk their kids kids just get "alt" profiles for all the stuff they don't want their parents to see

 

[Mandolin]

Well, whatever you do, do NOT steal your tweenage daughter's iPod and start "liking" every photo in her Instagram feed. Apparently it turns her into mega-geek, and you into the worst.mom.ever! :mrgreen:

Both of my kids are on Instagram and I thought about stalking them, but I didn't want to be "that Dad".

Oh, I wasn't stalking, just forgot for a moment that it wasn't my account LOL

 

[NancyMoranG]

Ok, I am ahead of HikinMike in that I have a cell phone. But put me in the category of "last person to get a social account" I have NO FB, Twitter or Instagram.
Nancy

 

[Derrel]

I use it as a friend-to-friend photo sharing site. I only follow a select, small group of people. Newer versions of the software can be used for direct messaging. My neighbor and her son went back to their native China this summer for five weeks.They just got back Friday night at 9 PM. Her son used Instagram direct messaging while in China to communicate with my son here in the western USA!! A LOT of young kids are using Instagram as their social media site of choice. The square format image helps keep images strongly focused on the central, core subject matter.

 

[jsecordphoto]

I use an app called photo squarer, that adds a border on the top and bottom of a 3x2 photo to fit the square format of instagram that way I don't have to crop my photos. It is easy enough to do in photoshop, just using making a 600x600px workspace, but it's way easier just having my phone add the borders and I don't have to worry about centering everything. It wasn't for a while, but lately IG has been one of my favorite social media outlets to share my photos. I have roughly the same amount of followers on IG as likes of my photo page on FB, but unlike facebook I know when I upload a photo ALL of my IG followers will see it (at least if they check their phones). Plus, with the hashtags I get to reach a ton of people who may otherwise never see my work.

The other thing I like about instagram is that I will share things on there that I may not share on my facebook page, like behind the scenes type photos that I've found my audience really enjoys. Just simple stuff like a cell phone photo of my tripod/camera set up at a new spot, showing where I'm shooting that day. It gives them a reason to check back at my final result and brings some more activity to my IG feed. Like I said it's actually turned into a pretty useful business tool and I've gotten work with a few companies through IG, so don't underestimate it.