“Instagram was created because there was no single place dedicated to giving your mobile photos a place to live and to be seen,” explains Kevin Systrom, the cofounder and CEO of the online mobile photo, video sharing application and social networking service. “The major reason why Instagram works is that you can follow anyone out there and start following their photos immediately,” continues Systrom. “In the past, people have looked at photos as a record of memory. The focus has been on the past tense. With Instagram, the focus is on the present tense.”
Certainly, Systrom has a lot to say about his company but it’s more important to hear what others are saying about Instagram—for better or for worse.
For Better…
“I’m an artist, so I love the graphic design of Instagram.” – Pierce Brosnan
“I like Instagram – I love pictures.” – Cecily Strong
“Instagram has become one of my favorite platforms because of its simplicity.” – Amy Jo Martin
“I like to communicate on my Instagram page with people: use it as a window to my world.” – Brad Goreski
“A lot of young kids like myself use Instagram because it has swag—it’s more personal, and your friends generate it.” – Theophilus London
For worse…
“When you think about the guys who started Twitter, and the Google guys, and the Facebook guys and the Napster guys, and the Microsoft guys, and the Dell guys and the Instagram guys, it’s all guys. The girls, they’re being left behind.” – will.i.am
“With social media, with Instagram and selfies and all these apps that are trying to make you look perfect…it’s hard for girls to grow up nowadays with all that stuff.” – Meghan Trainor
“I had a hard enough time in high school, fitting in without having to keep up with Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook—all these ways you have to keep up your image.” – Amanda Crew
“We’re so very focused on ourselves and on self-promotion. It goes on all day with Facebook and Twitter and Instagram.”- Nancy Jo Sales
“In the Digital Age, recorders also tend to be oversharers, and with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest, they can do so on a grand scale.” – Graydon Carter
“I don’t even know what Instagram is. All of this high-tech stuff is supposed to set us free and make life easier. To me, it makes it more difficult and demanding.” – Jeff Bridges
“Since the founding of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other mainstays of what technology writers have come to call The Social Webor Web 2.0, a sizable portion of humanity has learned to be together while apart, sacrificing intimacy for control and spontaneity for predictability.” – Walter Kirn
“Everyone Instagrams all the people they are with. I get that it’s part of the job. But there’s a point where it’s like, ‘Can’t you just be a person and have a separate life to your job?’” – Edie Campbell
“We need to be smarter than our smart phones and realize the people we are with are more important than the people we aren’t with, and way more important than the strangers we hope will tweet and like and share and Instagram whatever we’re sending out into the cybersphere.” – Regina Brett
“Everybody is continuously connected to everybody else on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, on Reddit, emailing, texting, faster and faster, with the flood of information jeopardizing meaning. Everybody’s talking at once in a hypnotic, hyper din: the cocktail party from hell.” – Maureen Dowd
“Especially with Facebook and Instagram and Twitter, I can’t tell necessarily the nitty gritty of what you’re really up to. I’m just seeing the performance of all the work you’re doing and the look you’re giving; it’s very hard to get to the center. It’s very hard to see what’s what.” – Casey Wilson
“There are those who build careers and companies just out of being popular on Instagram, but there’s nothing behind them.” – Margot Robbie
