My mom always teases me about my sense of trends (for lack of a better word). When we're out shopping I'll picking an article of clothing that she isn't very fond of (which means I usually end up putting it back) and then a few months (sometimes a year) later it will be the latest fashion trend. Or I'll get really excited about a certain app on my iPhone or get a new haircut (I'm always the girl who is the first to try a fashion trend... like ombre hair). With fashion my motto is to wear what you love and what looks good on you, the trends are so cyclical that you'll eventually be "in" again. But knowing and feeling like you look good is always chic.
Mostly though I want to talk about social media. I am, of course, addicted to Facebook like everyone else. I'm not embarrassed to say that it is my home screen when I open up a new page in Safari. I have fallen in love with timeline, which I was not a fan of to begin with, but it grew on me. Except for the fact that most of my 2011 is missing from my timeline, which I am not okay with, but I will survive. Timeline is just more efficient than the old Facebook. While I'm not 100% happy with the fact that messages are the same things as chats nowadays, I don't really want this whole blog to be about Facebook.
Twitter I joined during the middle days. I wasn't the first group to jump on the bandwagon, but since then Twitter has exponentially grown into the mass social media outlet it is today. I'm not sure I like it anymore. A person has to be constantly tapped into to Twitter to not be overwhelmed by the sheer number of tweets one has in their feed after a few hours of not checking it (okay make that more like a day). But in 1 day I bet I would have almost at least 300 tweets to read, at least! That's just an overload to my system. After about 100, I just stop caring and start skimming... usually missing a very important tweet from people I actually know. I used to love Twitter because I was able to say things on there that I usually would deem inappropriate for Facebook. But maybe it is time to throw in the Twitter towel?
Last summer I blogged about (in one of the few blogs that wasn't just a picture) Pinterest. Pinterest has grown and flourished so much since then. I think almost everyone has heard of it by now. Businesses are using it to help sell their products, mothers are using it to help them stay organized, people my age are using it to help them plan their dream weddings (even if they aren't engaged, I'm even guilty of this one). Basically the average person is using it to help them become a superhuman DIYer, decorator, baker, photographer, and everything else creative all in one. If I could actually do all of things I have pinned, I would feel pretty accomplished.
What I really started this post to blog about though was Instagram. If you have an iPhone and you don't have this app, you should really think about downloading it. If you don't have an iPhone and just want to see what it's all about check out Instagram's blog. There are also websites that allow you to sign-in via Instagram but you have to have an account first, so it wouldn't be too helpful if you don't have an iPhone. Instagram is (according to wikipedia) a free photo sharing application that allows users to take a photo, apply a ditigal filter (and blur!), then share it on a variety of social networking services including (Facebook and Twitter and) Instagram's own. You can get a list of all your friends (from Twitter and Facebook) that use Instagram and follow them on a Feed that shows you their latest uploaded pictures. I even follow some people (a lot) of people who I don't even know. It is a whole community where you can comment and share photographs. As a photographer, I think it's a pretty awesome resource. Some people put on contests or you can just have your own hashtag (#) series. I have a series going that is all about my dog (I think I might love him). While I was on Christmas vacation, my brother-in-law's little nephew had his own hashtag series going. I think it's almost more fun for me the photographer to come up with cleverish captions as it is taking the picture. You can also search hashtags, which I think is pretty awesome. Some of my pictures below relates to my sorority. I searched using the Kappa Kappa Gamma hashtag and I could see what other Kappas were doing across the nation. Amazing how small the world can become through awesome things such as this, huh?
I thought I'd let you see a few pictures just so you can see how awesome Instagram can be.
Labels: Electronics, Social Media
