Instagram influence in the world - Is it too late?

Set the wayback machine to October 2010 when I heard from a California friend about this new thing called “Instagram”. I knew no one else using the app but I dove in head first. Quick friends were made and filters were enjoyed. Over the years I become more mindful of the impact of this new world: the Facebook purchase, the stolen features from Snapchat, the influencers, the narcissism, the cynicism, and more.

As if waking from a dream I woke up one day and realized that Instagram simply wasn’t for me anymore. I deleted my account and that was that. It’s been well over a year and while I do miss friends I can’t bring myself to go back to that world. I regained literal hours of time each week and overall feel a much healthier outlook on the real world.

This Vox.com article captured so many of my thoughts, great read!

Vox.com - Instagram is broken, it also broke us.

Facebook's Wonderful Week of Fun - March 15

Each week when I make decisions about where to spend my time and what to post I become increasingly aware of the state of all things “facebook”. Maybe a weekly summary is good enough for now!

Here’s the highlights:

• Facebook, Instagram, and What’s App down for hours. Not due to DDOS but to a “server Issue”. Right, ok, sure. See The Verge’s article.

• Zuckerburg announces renewed focus on security and privacy, see Recode Article for details and Casey Newton for the Verge.

• My favorite of the week - you remember that phone number you added for two factor authentication that was only supposed to be used for security reasons? Yeah, sorry, not true. People can find you by using that phone number. Oops! Here’s details from Fast Company.

Facebook survived issues like this a decade ago when it was run by a group of fast moving people early in their career. We accepted those mistakes with an “awwww shucks” type of attitude. Those days are over. Facebook is a global technology powerhouse with the influence to change the course of human history.

Two words for you - wake up

These apps are stealing your data and it should be a crime →

This is a recurring rant that those close to me are expected to endure on a regular basis. As an early social media evangelist I could not have imagined the depths to which companies like FaceBook and Google (among others) would sink.

Gruber and Rene discuss this in depth on the latest episode of The Talk Show - The Talk Show Episode 245

I joined Twitter in May 2008, early enough that I could’ve had my four character nickname as a user ID. I joined Instagram in October 2010. I’ve walked away from it all now, no FaceBook, no Twitter, and no Instagram. My belief in privacy and need to talk from a position of integrity motivated this decision.

There is no “free” product! Unless you’re a paying customer then you are the product and pay with your personal data, family details, pictures of your children, and more.

A recent post by Rene shares some common practices that simply make me cringe…

Read Rene’s article here