Social/Communication App

In this review we will be discussing the social/communication app of ... Instagram!

There are many different social/collaboration apps that are used for all different types of networking events or simply socializing. Instagram has been an app that I find particularly enjoy using for communicating.

The mission of Instagram:

We're building Instagram to allow you to experience moments in your friends' lives through pictures as they happen.

Instagram follows their mission by allowing their users to upload photos of anything they would like to share. Friends of the user are allowed to like and comment on the picture.

Description

Instagram is a photo and video-sharing social networking app. It allows people to upload videos or pictures and share them with their friends. Once people upload their photos to their profile, their friends will be able to see it on their timeline and like the picture or comment. They can also share it with their other friends. The intended audience for this app is anyone who likes to share their pictures and videos for the world to see. Instagram also recently has a new feature that works similar to another app called Snapchat. The feature that these two have in common are what is called stories. If a person doesn't want to upload the picture and store it, then they can upload it to their story. The stories can only be viewed for 24 hours and after that they disappear and can only be saved by the owner. One feature that Instagram offers is called direct messages (DM) which allows students to send each other messages and share images if they wanted. Below is a video about how instagram works and how to properly use it. I have also attached a screenshot of what my personal instagram page looks like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z4AEDyKGdI

Design Review

Instagram has a very clean and visually appealing design. The colors of its logo are warm and welcoming and give off a sense of wanting to share images with our friends. It follows good design principles by allowing the user to have creative ownership as far as what to upload. They also have partnerships with other apps to help users design their story, add filters to their images, and even have what is called IG TV which allows users to upload videos similar to YouTube. For as long as I have had instagram, I cannot think of any limitations beside obviously not uploading any images that are inappropriate and also cyber bullying is not tolerated.

Educational Value

One of the ways that Instagram can be used for educational purposes is by using this app for marketing purposes. This would be a great tool to teach students how to promote events that they are having and how to use social media to its full extent. Since Instagram is a social/communication app, then students would also learn how to work with each other and improve on social skills. Other ways that Instagram can be used for education is making a page for the class and making posts that would remind students of upcoming events, projects, and assignments that may be due soon. Instagram helps users search images through hashtags. If a student wants to do research on a specific topic then the student could use this search engine to find what other people have uploaded about.

Conclusion

Overall Instagram is a very user friendly app that allows people to upload images and videos. I have seen many people use it for marketing purposes and promote things that they have created or are trying to sell. Others have used it as a platform to share their thoughts and feelings. I personally use it to give people an update on my life here and there. Life can get really busy at times and I don't really have time to text all my friends about what I have been up to so uploading a picture about a recent travel or something is my way of updating people about what I have going on in life.