What is Instagram please?

Instagram is arguably the most popular image-sharing site online. Since 2010, Instagram has amassed over a hundred million users, who use the service to exchange and share photos and videos....

Many of these photos involve cats!

Available for free via the Apple App store or Google Play, Instagram works rather like Facebook, except that Instagram is almost purely based around visual images rather than text. 

Rather than telling people what you've been doing with diary-style entries, you show them through pictures and films. Instagram is more like an interactive photo album,rather than a stream of written updates. 

Instagram users can share their pictures via other social networks, posting their photos and films to Facebook, Twitter, and so on. 

As with Facebook, you can follow friends and family (and vice-versa). This means you would need a private account, otherwise your pictures are available to view by the entire public.

You can also follow a celebrity's Instagram account, or just someone whose visual style and work you enjoy, although this depends if your request to view that person's account is accepted. 

Can Instagram Help Me Take Better Pictures?

In a way, yes. Instagram provides filters for users to customize photos, to give them a more 'professional' appearance. Often, users prefer to adapt their pictures to a similar in size and appearance to old-fashioned Kodak and Polaroid photographs; the above picture is an Instagram image, for example.