Pinterest is Relevant Folks!

In the past year, social media sites have been making additions to their programs, creating new apps and services while also fixing bugs and hiring “hackers” to help. In an article on Mashable.com we are informed of how much these fixes, innovations and additions are actually helping the sites to stay relevant and popular. More specifically; sites wanted to see how popular they were on the mobile front.

I personally don’t have a smart phone but, I have an iPod and iPad which are slaves to wifi. Therefore, my social media access is limited especially from a mobile standpoint. It was interesting to see that from a report from comScore, “Instagram users in the U.S. spend 98% of time with the network on mobile”. This apparently wasn’t surprising to Matt Petronzio, the author of the Mashable article because Instagram was actually a mobile-only site when it first came out and then later became desktop friendly.  

The second highest ranking mobile social media site is Pinterest which I thought was amazing. Users spend 92% of their time on mobile whereas Twitter users only chose the mobile experience 86% of the time.  This makes my inner Pinner sing with delight. I thought that Pinterest was mainly used by women who were crafting at home on their desktops. I feel so in-with-the-times now because whenever I latch onto wifi, I make additions to my boards. I also thought this was surprising because I always assumed that Twitter users essentially only used mobile because tweets are normally in “real-time” and not many people carry around their desktops.

The Measures We Take for More Likes and Followers on Instagram

The "InstLike" Scam

The Instagram Scam That Tricked Over 100,000 Users Into Giving Away Their Passwords

...well, that's Instagram worthy.

The Android app, InstLike, promised free Likes and followers to Instagram users was another effective scam that over 100,000 Instagram users fell for and became No. 22 under most downloaded "utility" apps and No. 571 app overall.

After downloading the free application, users were asked to share their usernames and passwords, turning them into willing participants of a giant scam. The app developers promised at the login screen that, "We don't steal your account," leaving the user feeling safe as if they could trust the application. Once starting the application, InstLike began following random users and liked random photos with your account. The more people who downloaded the application, the more likes and followers the pool of scammed users would get. If you weren't satisfied with the results of the free version of the app, you could buy virtual coins to accrue more likes and followers. The application got more than just your password, but as well as your credit card information. 

The app was overlooked by Apple and Google for months. The first red flag was put up by the security firm Symantec who spotted the scam in late October. "People didn't realize that they were being duped into giving their login credentials to this app," Satnam Narang, the security researched at Symantec who found out InstLike.

Symantec warned Apple and Google after their discovery and was removed from Google Play and the App Store on October 25th and November 7th. Though, it was too late, tens and thousands of users had already downloaded the application.

This scam is just one representation of the extensive measures we are willing to take to receive more likes and followers on Instagram. Instagram is the power of popularity among social media network. It has become a social standard to receive more than 60 likes on a photo. If you do not receive that many, then lengths will be taken from as far as posting photos of illegal drugs to posting nude photos. "It's just very interesting to see what length people will go in order to get likes on their photos," Narang added.

Even though the application has been removed from Google and Apple stores, the website, InstLike.com, is still in operation.

As George Carlin once said, "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups."

                                                                            Chloe Smith