Introducing Africa to the OMG crowd

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 23:09:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, Instagram added Everyday Africa (Tumblr) – a project I co-created with writer Austin Merrill to showcase daily life from across the continent – to its list of suggested users. I had been idly watching our followers the day it happened. We were at 990, and I was hoping we would finally hit 1,000. Suddenly, it jumped to nearly a new follower every minute. By the time we finished our two-week stint on the list, we had 17,000 pairs of eyes watching us. (After taking over the New Yorker's Instagram account this week, we gained another thousand plus).

Before our newfound popularity, most of our followers came from photography and NGO circles; most of our “likers” and “commenters” were people I knew or knew of. They commented with things like “great portrait,” shared their own African memory, or remarked on technical aspects of the pictures. Now, our followers are complete strangers of a demographic I can only guess at, with handles like “bieber_fever_2000” and “cuteeeelinda91.” The comments now have words (if we can call them that) like “OMG” and “adorbs.”

Salon.com > Everyday Africa

Introducing Africa to the OMG crowd