Thing 10: Sharing Photos

Now that you've taken those photos you probably want to be able to share them with others. In the past, in order to share photos you had to download them onto a computer and then upload them to a website or email or print them, however, since so many people use mobile devices there have been apps created to help you easily and effortlessly take your photos from your phone to the web. Both apps recommended in the 23 Mobile Things look interesting, although I don’t have experience using either (I tend to keep a lot of my personal life off of the internet). I started this thing looking forward to learning more about each of them.

Prior to this thing I had heard of Instagram, but never used it. One of the librarians at work had recently done a presentation about Instagram for staff because she is working on trying to use it in a Summer Reading Program for teens. Upon playing with it I found it was easy, quick and fun to use and it was very convenient that I could link it to my facebook account. 

I have heard quite a bit about Snapchat, but again, hadn't played with it prior to this Thing. I thought it was interesting that you could set a time limit for how long the receiver sees the picture and that was kind of fun to play with. It felt that Snapchat was like a picture instant messaging service.

Like I said earlier, I don’t put a lot of my pictures on the internet because I tend to keep a lot of my information off of the internet for privacy reasons, however, I could see myself using Instagram as part of my professional work. It is easy, a lot of people are already connected and using it, it is easy to connect to social media and it’s free! While Snapchat was interesting, there really wouldn't be a lot of reasons to use a disappearing photo on a professional basis (and none I would do in my personal life either!) and the app has a somewhat poor reputation overall, so will probably consider using Instagram more than Snapchat although it was interesting to learn about both and play with each. Happy sharing!