Picture sharing site Instagram wants you to read as well as look with reports out of the US it’s currently looking to hire a team of journalists to write pieces about its most popular photographers.
According to US industry website Digiday.com the photo sharing site wants to bring in a team of journalists to identify and popularise its budding stars. According to Digiday.com the company is on the lookout for at least five senior editorial hires who will be tasked with finding sort after Instagrammers and writing features on them that will be of interest to Instagram’s 300 million monthly users.
Of the300 million, some 70 per cent come from overseas; with a reported 2,060,000 Aussies uploading to the site.
Reports say that Instagram’s articles aren’t initially expected to be anything more than short pieces or blogs.
But as the Digiday article points out, a number of tech firms have trialled the editorial route with limited success. LinkedIn – with its business-skewed and motivational pieces – are arguably one of the few that have nailed an editorial offering. While it’s been less successful for the likes of Facebook, Tumblr and Snapchat.
Tumblr’s foray into editorial was such a disaster by mid-2013 it famously sacked its entire team of writers.
Jessica Bennett initially headed up Tumblr’s journalism creative and told Digiday.com of the reasons behind an editorial strategy and its ultimate failure. “What Tumblr really wanted was cheerleaders, and from the perspective of the company, I actually get that,” Bennett said. “Hiring journalists to do marketing makes sense: we’re good storytellers. But those journalists need to understand that what they’re being set up to do is marketing. We thought we were legitimately going to be able to do journalism, and we weren’t willing to compromise that. And then we got fired!”
