Vanity Metrics: Instagram Is The New Google

Vanity Metrics: Instagram Is The New Google

… So I advise you to clean up.

What do you think is the first thing people do after they meet you?
Add you on Facebook?
(If you just met your grandparents for the first time)
Search you on LinkedIN?
(Probably not even after a job interview. TOO curated)
Google you?
(You really have to earn that one. All of the content people really want takes too long to search for because most people don’t even know what SEO means)

Maybe before 2010 those were all viable options but now Instagram is king for millennials. Even though the biography portion is limited to 160 characters, since the launch of Instagram, it has become the resumé, portfolio, booking agent, and, according to a recent survey, the FIRST place that a person is searched after an initial interaction. 67% of new interactions result in a one way follow while only 34% result in a mutual follow.

Why?
Well the answer is simple: a picture is worth a thousand words. People are more interested in seeing who you are (what you post) and formulating their own opinions of who you are (what you post) than they are in reading your bio (who you really are?) or the pages upon pages of articles you commissioned to boost your search results.

From the very beginning, Instagram was set to be a success story. In fact, it had 1 million users just 2 months after its launch and it’s been growing ever since. Grandfather Google has a different perspective on how you want to find people and information. Google says that if a person wants to be found, the person being searched has to adhere to the mega search engine’s algorithm rules (which change often) which include creating new content for yourself daily (Instagram posts perhaps?), using specific tested mega tags, and tailoring your content, which in this case is your life, to appeal to a wider audience. The searcher must in turn use the exact keywords Google deems relevant which may or may not actually work. Then in the off chance that you may actually find what link you’re looking for once you’ve reached page 712, you have to sift through Google ads to actually find he content.

“Serving our end users is at the heart of what we do and remains our number one priority” (Google Founders’ Letter, 2004).
So said Larry and Sergey in the year they took Google public. But six years earlier, when they were still students at Stanford, they had a different view. In an academic paper they wrote in 1998, Larry and Sergey warned:
“Advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of consumers” (Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, 1998).

And therein lies The Google Problem.

It is on this realization that Larry and Sergey have built one of the most insidiously anticompetitive businesses of our time. Google’s point-by-point rebuttal of the concerns raised is quite revealing about Google’s view of its place in the world.
Google says “we built Google search for consumers, not web sites.” The assertion may come as a surprise to Google shareholders. We think it’s fair to say Google search was built for advertisers, not consumers.

While Google is still the dominant search engine, Instagram is a more direct and concise way to create or modify a “picture” (pun intended) of who a person is. Instagram is not text heavy which makes it more user friendly and thus makes it win the “quick research” vs in depth detail search war. Make no mistake; in understanding this article, we are currently in no way proponents of switching to Instagram from Google for hard facts and information. We are simply stating that the popularity shift could lead Instagram to expand into a more google centric lane. If you’re familiar with the “Mean Girls Theory” then you know that, like people, popularity can make companies do some crazy things.

Exhibit A: PornHub

While Google’s social network Google+ continues to be the “Annie” of the social media family failing miserably , the 10 most popular things to do using social media are also coincidentally the ten most popular things to do using Instagram by it’s 150 million monthly active users.
1. Show Your Products
2. Show the process of how your product is made
3. Go Behind the Scenes
4. Show What Your Products Can Do
5. Make your followers feel special
6. Show Your Office
7. Take Us With You
8. Introduce Your Employees
9. Share Celebrity Sightings
10. Share the Cuteness
Bonus: Selfies

Everyone in tech is currently obsessed with going mobile & wearable devices are a close second. The reason for this is that personalization is the now and the future. The aesthetic is more important than the information. More importantly, the only way to upload to Instagram is via the mobile app. So I ask again:
What do you think is the first thing people do after they meet you?
“What’s your IG?” has replaced the obligatory “I’ll look you up on LinkedIN”. Think about that before you “repost whiz” that popular meme or participate in the #ArchThatBackChallenge on your personal or business profiles.

Remember: The Internet is just a series of tubes.

---