Instagram: Your Home For Thanksgiving Photos
By Anthony Todd in Food on Nov 26, 2012 4:00PM
Apparently, we were the only people in America who didn't Instagram our Thanksgiving feast. In a blog post published Friday, the fake-Polaroid maker announced that this Thanksgiving was the busiest day they'd ever had.
Instagram searched for "thanksgiving-themed words" in photo captions to figure out that over 10 million Thanksgiving shots were shared last Thursday. That doesn't even account for ironic hipster Thanksgiving captions, bitter vegetarian Thanksgiving captions ("Happy bird massacre day") or family photos that weren't tagged with #Thanksgiving. At one point, 226 photos per second were being shared. Instagram didn't give a list of "Thanksgiving-themed" words, but we can imagine the list: #turkey, #mashedpotatoes, #pumpkinpie, #getmeoutofhere, #mightmurdermyfamily, etc.
Photo via Instagram blog.
There are several conclusions one might draw from this. First, don't ever give your picture an accurate caption if you don't want Instagram to gather data about it. Second, we'd bet that by next year, Instagram will invent technology that can recognize a turkey in a photo without a caption so as to ensure the numbers keep going up. Third, instead of hanging out with family and actually eating Thanksgiving dinner, a significant portion of the population was spending the most important meal of the year Instagramming every bite of their Brussels sprouts.
Instagram gushed, "Whether celebrating with friends and family or sharing photos with them halfway across the globe, we’re excited to see the intimacy and immediacy of the Instagram experience bring us all closer together over this holiday season." Bringing us all a bit closer together online while keeping us just a tiny bit further apart in real life.