Alicia Eler, ReadWriteWeb, on an interesting study that examined how and why people use Instagram:
From the surveys, six key trends emerged: sharing, documentation, seeing, community, creativity and therapy. People wanted more than anything to exchange images with others throughout the network, find people with whom they had common interests, document the world around them and see provide “visual status updates” to their friends. A community evolved. People were excited about the visual social interaction, and used Instagram as a creative outlet. They also found Instagram to be, in some ways, rather therapeutic.
Instagram is a staple on my iPhone home screen. It allows us to immediately see the world through others’ eyes.