Hello IGers! this is a new blog which will explore different aspects of the phenomenon that is Instagram.

One of the curious aspects of Instagram is that while there are around 100m users (as of October 2012) and counting, and there is not much written on the web about who these users are, how they use it, and the complex rules of engagement that are evolving.

While many people use Instagram to post pictures of their pets and what they ate for dinner, many others are discovering a serious interest in photography, or at least  finding the hidden  beauty in some of those old holiday snaps lying around in forgotten folders.

This blog is at least partly to answer some of the questions that I have myself:

• What works in Instagram and what doesn't? Why do pictures that you thought were bad turn out to be instagram hits and vice versa? 
• How do people end up with 100s of thousands of followers? And what then? Is it very satisfying? What is a normal growth pattern?
• Who are the big cheeses of Instagram? Is there someone or some group of people who are pulling the strings?  Or is it a randomly democratic?
• Why does the popular page only show posts by people who have thousands of followers already? (it's obvious if you think about it - because they get a lot of likes very quickly - but why adopt such a stupid algorithm?) What about publicising good new people?
• Pets I can understand, but why are there so many pictures of painted fingernails?
• The etiquette of instagram. When to like, when not. How to respond. What to post, what not, and how frequently?
• Statigram, Webstagram or what? Which web viewer is best and why?
• Why are dogs' lips black? [actually no, we're not going to go into that here ...]
• And so on and so on ...

It will be also a lobbying forum to the makers of Instagram, which, let's face it is a fairly shoddy bit of software. Barely a day goes by without Instagram crashing on my iPhone 4, and the little orange friend that tells you how many likes, comments and follower you have seems to come and go with a life of its own - completely at random! And why can I see that I'm following someone but not whether they're following me (or at least, not without having to trawl through a list of followers)?

To kick off, here are some of the people or feeds that I really like:

kcmcgrady: web.stagram.com/n/kcmcgrady/ - cool, lurid but somehow unpretentious 


nationalgeographic_: web.stagram.com/n/natgeo/

cmykerr: web.stagram.com/n/cmykerr/

jessnaylorphotography: web.stagram.com/n/jessnaylorphotography/

skdude: web.stagram.com/n/skdude/ 

Now please post your top 5!

- InstaBlogr