Faye Oakey PR.

Instagram - I’m so obsessed with this iPhone app at the minute. If you’ve read my blog before you’ll know of my love for photography, combine this with a set of very beautiful vintage effects and they had my attention instantly! My love for images has been rekindled and revitalised.

Big Ben, London, UK

The app’s website - http://instagr.am/ explains where the inspiration came from:

When we were kids we loved playing around with cameras — we loved how all the old Polaroid cameras marketed themselves as “instant” (something we take for granted today). We also felt that the snapshots people were taking were kind of like telegrams in that they got sent over the wire to others — so we figured why not combine the two? Instagram came from that inspiration—could we make sharing your life as instant and magic as those first Polaroid pictures must have felt?

South Beach, Miami, Florida, USA

But, the beauty of Instagram derives from not only exciting images, but the social construct as well. We are a generation of social media fanatics, Instagram is designed to perfectly appeal in this territory that now comes so naturally to us.

The CEO of the operation, Kevin Systrom, has an amazing background in the world of the web so its hardly surprising Instagram is so well constructed. His experience began as an intern for Odeo - now known as Twitter - upon graduation in 2006. He later worked for Google for two years - impressive!

Instagram like most other social media platforms, allows the user to generate a personal profile, which can be either public or private. Users can also choose to share their images to other sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and FourSquare, allowing for a wider audience. Images chosen to be shared via Facebook are also saved into in album ‘Instagram Photos’.

You can follow friends or people of interest to you, and similarly can be followed. There is also the option to ‘like’ photos, or publish comments, creating an easily sociable platform.

Boston, Massachusetts, USA

There is a ‘feed’ offering the newest and most recent content shared by users you are following and ‘news’ meaning you can see comments, likes and follows your friends have initiated.

Another useful element offered on the app is the ‘Popular’ tab, which works in a similar way to that of Twitter’s ‘trends’. This allows users to view content which has wide appeal.

Leeds, UK

Overall, I think a brilliant and creative social platform, going one step further than sharing our lives via words - statuses/tweets - but with expressive images. And all for free on the App store. No complaints!

Source: http://instagr.am/about/

Source: http://instagr.am/about/faq/