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Instagram

  • Cape Town stars on Lonely Planet’s weekend Instagram takeover

    By on 24 July, 2017

    Travel company Lonely Planet has a good 1.4-million followers on Instagram, and this past weekend they all got a scrumptious taste of Cape Town thanks to an impromptu takeover. Piloted by travel blogger Monica Suma, Lonely Planet's Instagram photo log briefly turned into a carousel of Cape Town's landscapes and landmarks. Reception was positive too. The five uploaded images -- featuring Chapman's Peak Drive, Camps Bay's Twelve Apostles, Hout Bay, Long Street and the newly opened Silo Hotel at the V&A Waterfront -- racked up a combined 54 000 likes. 'Aside from being a landscape paradise, Cape Town is also one of the...

  • 14 gorgeous Instagram snaps of South Africa’s weekend snow

    By on 17 July, 2017

    The latest cold front that scurried across South Africa this weekend brought more than just rainfall to the Western Cape. The province, along with parts of the Northern Cape and Eastern Cape, were blanketed in healthy layers of snow. Thanks to the perfect timing of the front, much of the snow fell over the weekend in these provinces. That gave social media users and adventurers an excuse to pack those puffer jackets, smartphones and head out to document the weather. Below are just some of the snaps of South Africa's latest snowfalls taken by Instagrammers. Table Mountain might not get snow often, but...

  • #BeyonceTwins: Bey breaks Instagram with first picture of Sir and Rumi

    By on 14 July, 2017

    Beyonce might've been in the news recently courtesy of her husband's new album, but the singer-songwriter-mega social media star today unveiled her one-month-old twins to the world. And yes, they are utterly adorable. The post hit the social network around 5am Friday in South Africa, and subsequently garnered 3.1-million likes, with 137 000 comments to boot. It's on its way to becoming the most-liked post on the network ever, a title held by Beyonce's pregnancy reveal posted in February 2017. "Sir Carter and Rumi 1 month today," reads the post. Sir Carter and Rumi 1 month today. 🙏🏽❤️👨🏽👩🏽👧🏽👶🏾👶🏾 A post shared by Beyoncé (@beyonce) on...

  • Instagram Stories adds unique feature, Snapchat is shook

    By on 7 July, 2017

    Did Instagram just add a feature that Snapchat doesn't have yet? And is it actually pretty cool? Is it raining? In Cape Town? Okay, probably not, but the first two definitely happened. The Facebook-owned social network has announced a new feature that allows users to reply to stories with photos, videos or even boomerangs. The feature is included in the latest update, and is simple and user-friendly. To use it, users need only tap on the camera icon at the bottom of a story to take a photo or video. The feature includes all the frills of a normal story snap, including face filters,...

  • Aaron Paul’s Instagram is creepy (and other surprising social media presences)

    By on 26 June, 2017

    Before yesterday, I had a fairly positive view of Breaking Bad star Aaron Paul. Having only watched the pilot episode, I don't have much of an opinion on his acting, but I know a little about him from my days on Tumblr and various other social media platforms. For instance, I know that he was once on US game show The Price is Right, where he emphatically took to the stage to scream his excitement about losing. But my experience on Tumblr and YouTube never accounted for the disappointment I'd receive upon learning of Aaron Paul's Instagram. At first glance, Paul has...

  • Winter in the Western Cape: Instagram laced with weekend snow pictures

    By on 12 June, 2017

    Last week's cold front brought some extreme weather to South Africa's Western Cape. Along with driving rain and gale-force winds in Cape Town, it also drove hot berg winds to the Garden Route, which fuelled the catastrophic Knysna fire. While the latter is now largely under control, there was another weather phenomenon that some took the time to capture with their smartphones and upload online -- snow. People are uploading their weekend snow adventure pictures in the Western Cape on Instagram The Western Cape's higher peaks this weekend -- including the Matroosberg, the Hottentots-Holland and the Hex River Mountains -- were laced...

  • Instagram copies Snapchat again, internet doesn’t let it go quietly

    By on 16 May, 2017

    Snapcha... sorry, I mean Instagram today announced a brand new feature coming to its Stories feature -- face filters. "Today, we’re introducing face filters in the camera, an easy way to turn an ordinary selfie into something fun and entertaining," the company announced on its blog. Users posting pics or videos of themselves to Instagram Stories can now adorn themselves with furry koala ears, nerd glasses, ice-queen crowns and other things deemed to be "dope af". Today, we’re introducing face filters, an easy way to turn an ordinary selfie into something fun and entertaining. Whether you’re sitting on the couch at home...

  • Michael Bay-like motorcycle explosion from China caught on tape, goes viral

    By on 11 May, 2017

    Usually its Russia that's on the receiving end of bad driving memes and videos, but last Saturday it was a Chinese motorcyclist who made all the wrong headlines. In Nanchang, China, a motorcyclist collided with a truck attempting to turn into a three-lane road. The bike, caught between the truck's cockpit and dump tray, then exploded, setting the motorcyclist on fire. It all looked a lot like a set-piece in a Michael Bay movie. A motorcyclist in China escaped with his life, and a few more Instagram views, after his fiery crash went viral Remarkably, the motorcyclist didn't sustain any "life-threatening injuries" after...

  • Sorry Cape Town, the Kruger National Park is SA’s most Instagrammed destination

    By on 11 May, 2017

    Here's a turn up for the books. If you were expecting Cape Town's Table Mountain, V&A Waterfront or Johannesburg's Sandton City to be the most Instagrammed place in the land, you've got it all wrong. According to Dutch travel company TravelBird, the Kruger National Park takes the honour of South Africa's most Instagram-famous destination. In fact, the country's largest national park is the only South African venue to feature in the world's top 400, ranking at number 49 in TravelBird's survey, and beating the likes of Boston's Fenway Park, Stonehenge and Mount Rushmore. As for the most Instagrammed place on the planet,...

  • Instagram now has a 700-million-strong user army

    By on 26 April, 2017

    Not letting Twitter get all the positive news today, Facebook-owned Instagram announced on its blog that it has reached a new milestone of its own. "We’re thrilled to announce that our community has grown to more than 700 million Instagrammers. And the last 100 million of you joined faster than ever," the company exclaims in a thank you note to users. And yeah, those 100-million monthly active users did join faster than ever. After it's 2010 launch, it took over three years to gain its first 100-million users. And considering that the company announced that it reached the 600-million user mark in...

  • 10 Instagram snaps of people living life at Splashy Fen 2017

    By on 18 April, 2017

    So how did you spend your long Easter weekend, South Africa? If you were at Splashy Fen, you probably had quite the time... at least judging by my Instagram feed. #Splashy was the hashtag of choice for the festival this year, racking up over 20 000 images according to the social networking site. Not all of these were snapped by people enjoying themselves in the green, green Underberg though, but a vast majority were. Splashy Fen first took place in South Africa back in 1990, a full four years before OppiKoppi made its mark The oldest annual music festival in the country...

  • The most Instagram-famous world leader isn’t who you think

    By on 12 April, 2017

    When considering world leaders on social media, it's usually Twitter or Facebook that first comes to mind. US President Donald Trump has made waves with his sweeping tweets about foreign policy, and New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English caused an uproar when he put spaghetti and pineapple on his pizza. But over the past five years, world leaders have increasingly decided that Instagram is as worthy a contender for politics as any other platform. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words. A recent study by Burson-Marsteller looked at the way politicians around the world communicate via the photo- and video-sharing platform, and the results aren't as predictable...

  • Instagram for Windows 10 just got a small, but welcome feature buff

    By on 6 April, 2017

    Oh, Instagram users. You still can't upload images directly from your PC to the social network, but at least you can now send images to others as direct messages. Yay! The universal Windows 10 app allows anyone with an Instagram account to log into the social network and engage with it on PC. And although you can't quite upload snaps just yet, you can treat the social network like a messenger. According to Windows Central, the Windows 10 app now lets users add images from their hard drive to a direct message. Whether you actually use Instagram to send direct messages, let alone...

  • 9 depressingly beautiful pictures of Cape Town’s biggest dam

    By on 4 April, 2017

    It's getting desperate, Cape Town. The City of Cape Town announced the latest dam levels, and it's not positive. As it stands, the Western Cape dam storage system has just over 25% capacity left. The largest dam in the system, the Theewaterskloof, is just 21% full. Calling this situation a "glass half empty" is being generous. We've seen a number of videos from vloggers and drone pilots in the past few weeks documenting the drought from the air, but sometimes, a still image from the ground is so much more shocking than a moving picture. With that in mind, we took to Instagram...

  • Fake followers are a massive problem, as SA duo proves

    By on 31 March, 2017

    It's almost become an unspoken fact over the years that social media has a major problem with fake followers. Now, two writers have brought the problem into the open by running a dummy Instagram account and buying fake followers in the process. Lipgloss is My Life editor Leigh van den Berg and Candice-Lee Kannemeyer, the editor of In My Bag, created the Instagram account to find out how easy it was to buy followers in the first place. So @CandiceLeeKan and I have just done an experiment. We set up a crappy instagram account in a bid to see how easy...