Instagram, the Facebook-owned photo-sharing app, announced that it has grown to more than 150 million users who capture and share moments of their lives with the world.
Every moment.
Possibly too many moments.
What’s even more amazing is the recent spike in adoption. Just this past February, Instagram reported 100 million monthly active-users and in the last seven months it has added 50 million more.
According to Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, the demographic make-up of Instagram users as of December 2013 is adults aged 18- 29 primarily urban residents. More importantly, they’re hipsters, a creative and artsy subculture of men and women who fervently buck trends, value independent thinking, and promote counter-culture ideas in the face of mainstream norms.
This is great news for advertisers seeking to target the lucrative hipster market because Instagram reports that advertising will begin to make its appearance on the growing social network within the year.
“Whether it’s documenting protests in Egypt, sharing the trip of a lifetime across the United States or snapping #petselfiez, this community continues to surprise us every day with your creativity, sense of adventure and unique perspectives on the world,” Instagram said in a statement announcing the new statistics. Certainly, our lives have a distinctive look when viewed through the filter of Instagram (no pun intended).
The World According To The Instagram Filter
Buzzfeed had some fun with how hipsters have taken to Instagram in a post that displayed images from the Urban Outfitters catalogue and asked readers to decide if, in fact, they were images from a product catalogue or a hipster Instagram gallery.
“You might think that bearded, Carhartt-wearing, ironic dudes riding fixed geared bicycles in Brooklyn are obnoxious – but a different brand of 21st century hipster is helping make photography, er, awesomer,” states Allen Murabayashi in a Photoshelter blog that celebrates the nerdtastic dedication characteristic of these photo hipsters. Hipsters, who call out traditional social networks like Facebook as being too mainstream, have adopted Instagram as their own. The use of the artsy filters and image frames can turn something as simple as a white tee shirt into an anti-culture statement.
With 150 million monthly filter-obsessed Instragram users is being a hipster now mainstream? New applications are hitting the market to counter the effect of hipsters on social media. For example, Normalize, a new iOS app from developer Joe Macirowski, restores photos to “what they’re supposed to look like” by removing the filters applied to those images. Chalk one up for those with pending hip-replacements instead of hip tees and skinny jeans.
The Economy of Hip
Hipsters are having a profound effect on the economy, and businesses must take note. The Economist chimed in on this market segment, claiming that they’ve turned London inside out, in an article this month outlining the demographic and economic changes occurring in the UK. Young affluent hipster-Millennials are flocking to the city, creating enclaves of indie-bookstores, coffee shops, and art boutiques. As these communities grow, so do the rents. The inner-city, in places such as Dalston (in Hackney) and Peckham (in Southwark), are becoming affluent areas and, in contrast, the outer suburbs are getting poorer as people who cannot afford inner-London rents are pushed out.
This demographic has become so important that Yelp! is now mapping out hipster communities and businesses, according to a report in the EastsiderLA. The new feature creates heat maps based on the frequency of specific words that appear in reviews for bars, restaurants and other services.
Hipster Instagram Bingo
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, 150 million users cannot be ignored. Brands must pay attention to how this audience views the world. So, for this week’s Sunday Morning Read blog post, the team at Sensei has decided to help by offering this new game: Hipster Instagram Bingo. Use the handy game card below when reviewing the images you’re posting online. The more matches you find, the more hipster your personal or business brand is!
Sensei Debates: Does Instagram’s content reflect the wider community or has it become a very niche network of hipsters? Can it be relevant to more than just brands selling skinny jeans and thick-rimmed glasses?
Anything we should be adding to our hipster Instagram Bingo game card?
Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego