- Thu Aug 31, 2023 2:48 pm
#51778
I think, to some extent historically, Instagram wasn't ever really envisioned as a social network per se, being originally a camera app that then added sharing, before becoming a full SMN when Facebook took over*. It had a userbase of people that took interesting (FSVO) pictures and just proceeded by inertia (it helped that at the time Twitter was still seen as pretty nerdy and Facebook itself was going through one of its regular downturns over some nonsense) and a somewhat more fluffy image than the other two big guns.
Less historically, it's always had a big following of young women, which tends to attract more young women, as well as, well, people who like to look at young women. Reels was friendlier than YouTube in use, the commenters tended a lot less depraved, and content could sail a bit closer to the wind. There's a reason that the SMN that nicked that (TikTok) does better than the multitudes of photo-based social sites that tried to catch the other waves
Pinterest has some image problems (irretrievably tied to hobby/hippy) and doesn't offer much in the way of unique content you couldn't dig out with a targeted image search. The retail side is quite broken, there's a lot of dropship tat and "I've bought a CNC [maker device], please pay for it" bits and bobs. It's still useful for what you say, K, I just would never have it as a port of call
*I have an Instagram account going back to the old, old days, so much so that my handle on there is a truncated version of my Twitter handle, because it had the "Login Using X" as an option, as well as cross-posting to other networks. Possibly including Bebo and MySpace
We regard capitalist journalism as an effective weapon in the hands of a well-informed, but utterly unscrupulous, enemy, rather than merely as an unbiased recorder of passing events.
