I always wonder with people who take snaps of buildings, roads,
food or whatever it is using their mobile phones. I thought (obviously!) they
are not professionals, who would carry their chunks of camera like their babies
and take hundreds of picture of a building or landscape. So, when one of my
friends got this widespread phenomenon (of taking pictures that interest her),
I wanted to know what is that? Is she going to upload it in facebook and why
would she do that?
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| (The Logo of Instagram, Sources: Instagram) |
Then, she introduces me to Instagram, an application that allows the users to share photos (of anything) directly from their iphones and androids. Apparently, this application has been a ‘hit’. Since the time it was launched in late 2010, Mashable estimated that there are more than 50 million users joining Instagram now (Watch out, facebook!) and the number is still growing. You can join the trends (similar to twitter) by adding hash tag “#”. So, if you want to post the bacon-and-egg you had this morning, you can add trends like #baconandegg, #yum, #brekkie or whatever trends you can think of (pouring out all of your creativity, wohoo!).
To add my surprise, I discover that people with different
hobbies, different jobs and from various backgrounds exist in Instagram. There
are celebrities, students, housewives, cheerleaders, models, bloggers and so on
(you name it!). Wait! Why are there bloggers in this? Shouldn’t they post their
stuff on their blogs instead?
These questions have been the ‘kicks’ that make me want to
explore more about the reasons for users of using different social platforms,
particularly Instagram to share their passion in fashion industry. My features
will focused on three different (but, relevant) users/sources:
[a] The existing fashion
bloggers (so far, I found enourmous number of fashion bloggers who are also
active in Instagram) – Why do they use Instagram on top of their personal
fashion blogs? What are some of Instagram features that made it more stand out
than their own fashion blogs? Who would they follow in Instagram?
[b] The fashion brands
and stores (Wittner is one of the brands that use Instagram J) – What do
they share in their Instagram account? Do they use Instagram to market their
brands and stores? Why and how do they do it? Who would they follow in Instagram?
[c] Other users,
including students, housewives and so on, who
loves to share their passion for fashion mainly through Instagram (those
who do not own personal fashion blog) – What do they share in their Instagram?
Why do they choose Instagram over other existing platform? Who would they
follow in Instagram?
To explore these questions, I am planning to use several
approaches to help build my feature:
- Photos – As a group, we are planning to capture relevant pictures as much as possible, particulary in special fashion events. The good news is we are going to Vogue’s Fashion Night Out event in Sydney CBD to secure pictures that is relevant to fashion industry, which also conveys the users or audience, the brands/stores and the fashion ambassadors (could be bloggers, celebrities and models).
- Videos – We will record the interviews with the targeted sources and include it in the features.
- Voxpops – This will be done mainly to gather the information from the targeted sources of ‘other users’ (explained above) since I predict the number of this group will exceed the other two sources.
- Twitter – We have created a Twitter account called @FashionalityAUS, please follow us! We will definitely post great stuff there as well J We will follow the target sources through twitter (if they have one!) and gather their thoughts through several thematic posts that are relevant to Instagram, for example: ‘Twitter + Instagram, yay or nay?’
This will be an exciting research to do. I hope you guys are as
overwhelmed as I am right now! Will update you soon, watch out!
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