Summer

By the end of 2012, Instagram will be over and a new application will come its way. I realized that most social networking websites and applications don’t last very long. They mostly become famous at one point, but then die out after a while.

I made a theory about the reason behind their suffering. The theory consists of two parts. First of all, too many people are using it. Following a 6-year-old and a 78-year-old on a social network at the same time, is not entertaining or useful. Of course, one would say, why not unfollow them? That 6-year-old could be your sister and that 78 year-old could be your grandfather. I call this the generation clash. The other part is that companies make accounts and use it as an advertising technique. Even if you ignore their requests or block them, you still get follow requests on a daily basis from many other companies worldwide. To me those accounts are spam accounts.

Here are a few examples:

Generation Clash – Facebook first started out as website dedicated to people who go to college only. It wasn’t intended for any other audience. After its success, it allowed anyone to make an account. So, kids and old people started making accounts and it got weird and BORING. An example of a kid’s status update: Just ate popcorn! YAY! YUMMY! COOL! LOL!!!!! While a really old person’s update would be:

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
- Hamlet, III, i

Spam Accounts – Twitter used to be a place where you write what’s on your mind and talk to your friends either by mentioning them or messaging them. Now, people tweet in “retweets”. That means they tweet stuff that practically guarantees being retweeted, so they can get more followers and attention. Then the companies started taking over. Their tweets spam your timeline and they’re just pointless. All they do is advertise. Also, they do the tweet in retweets thing which drives me nuts!!

Instagram..

Poor thing. It’s getting hit by the generation clash and the spam accounts. Instagram is over packed with companies and especially start-up businesses to show off their products and prices. They spam you by following you and then liking every single picture. They practically force you to follow them (but I still don’t). It’s also suffering from the generation clash, because crappy pixellated pictures from Google aren’t real pictures. Those types of pictures come from both kids and adults. Instagram is about taking pictures and not stealing them off the internet.