Instagram users tag 250,000 Election Day photos
Instagram reported that its users tagged about 250,000 Election Day photos.
Instagram is a popular mobile photo-sharing app that is available on Apple iOS and Google Android phones.
According to the company's blog post, 100,000 photos were tagged with the hashtag #IVoted and 150,000 were tagged with #election2012. It's worth noting that users can upload photos to Instgram without a hashtag, so the number of photos on Election Day may be higher.
Whether or not to Instagram the vote was a bit an issue Tuesday because people were posting photos of completed ballots and polling locations on the mobile app. Question were raised over whether or not users were breaking the law.
Usage on Instagram spiked when the election was called for President Barack Obama. The company reported the peak was at about 8:20 p.m. PT, with more than double the normal upload rate.
Social media played a big role in the 2012 election cycle, enabling conversations between users in real-time, while watching conventions, debates or election results. Twitter's government team reported several record-breaking moments.
Guinness World Records reported that Obama broke three social media world records: Most widespread social network message in 24 hours, Most likes on a Facebook item in 24 hours and Most likes on a Facebook item ever.
Following the news that Obama was projected to win reelection, the Obama campaigntweeted a photo of the Obamas embracing with the caption, "Four more years."
According to website BuzzFeed, the update skyrocketed to No. 1 in about 22 minutes, with 226,249 retweets. The Twitter status has now been retweeted 803,944 times.
Social media played a big role in the 2012 election cycle, enabling conversations between users in real-time, while watching conventions, debates or election results.
Instagram launched for the iPhone in 2010. The app lets users upload or take photos and apply filters to get a similar look and feel of lo-fi photography. After photos are processed, users can immediate broadcast pictures to other Instagram users, Twitter or Facebook.
