Young people also watch Twitter, but only on Instagram

Once a social platform becomes popular, younger users sneak out in search of alternatives. The current generation is no exception. The Pew Research Center recently published a report in which it said that young users on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr hit new lows. But that doesn't mean young people don't read content on these platforms anymore. Instead, Instagram — still popular as a platform for uploading glossy vacation photos, coffee, and inexplicable selfies — has become the new platform for consuming screenshots of the platform's premium content.

"Facebook is dead. Tumblr users are still alive in 2011. Snapchat has nothing to do with our discussion, and I don't even know what I'm talking about." Amato Hartwig, a 22-year-old new Yorker who runs an Instagram account @manicpixiememequeen, told The Verge, "Instagram and Twitter are the only two media platforms that are important for millennials." For Harthwig, the Instagram image-first feature is a good fit for meme (memes, memes, memes, and snippets) culture, which she says is easier to grow and blend in. "Meme and the captions on it are themselves spread in the form of pictures," she said.

Some of the Instagram accounts that post memes have millions of followers, and many don't just collect content, they create on Twitter and Tumblr first, and send screenshots to Instagram. For some of the makers of memes, Twitter and Tumblr are the canvases, while Instagram is the wall of their work. Part of the reason for this is that for creators who want to accumulate fans, there's no harm in having one more Twitter.

I'm a bit offensive, but when it comes to memes, Twitter is, said Anuj, author of the Instagram account @abuttwithaview that focuses on gay culture-related memes, who lives in India and was inspired to see other meme accounts on the platform two years ago and started making the number. Similar to other accounts, his content is a screenshot of text, or graphics, on Twitter and Tumblr. "Twitter's typography is that if you post a picture, it will be cropped [on the preview interface], and meme is invisible on the photo wall unless you click on the tweet." He explained.

But success on one platform can't translate to another. On Instagram, @manicpixiememequeen more than 48,000 followers, but on Twitter, it's just over 1,000. @heyqueentv, it's the same for @grapejuiceboys.

"You might think I have a big number on Instagram and nearly 50,000 people follow me, and they must be wondering what I'm tweeting?" Hartwig said, "But people just dismiss your Twitter. I've got an estimated 2,000 likes for one tweet on Instagram, and two tweets, twenty or thirty likes, is pretty much the same." She said that tweets about popular things and social hotspots are easy to respond to, while Instagram gives more flexibility to the topic.

In theory, it's easier for Twitter to share content; retweets are an important part of this model, and you can share them with a single click. Becoming popular on Twitter is also a double-edged sword: even if you send a paragraph that is very popular, you will not gain new fans, but most meme creators are to expand the fan base, not to become popular for 15 minutes. Going viral a few times could result in the platform being virtually unusable, not just because of spam, but also for personal harassment and privacy being mined.

"People on Instagram don't understand meme the same way," said Gabriella, 23, the woman behind the @sighswoon account, "people prefer to communicate ideas conveyed by memes rather than with the ideas conveyed by a specific person, which feels a bit like a tension, allowing an idea to spread impartially." It's kind of magical."

If I had to say anything about Twitter's advantages, it would be to allow nudity — which is much looser than Instagram, which doesn't even allow nipples on it. But Twitter's discovery mechanism makes it hard for users to see different content, and searching through hashtag means finding what you want in hundreds of tweets, even if the trending topic is downgraded to a humble sidebar.

Speaking of attracting new fans, Instagram's discovery page leads Twitter. It only takes a few seconds to turn over a page of images, and a little extra time to load a new page, because the discovery page on Instagram is easy to click on. Users can more easily browse similar content. For meme creators, this increases their likelihood of attracting bored viewers.

"You're not famous, and you get more interactions on Instagram than on Twitter," Anuj said. He noted that Instagram's hashtag features can be stacked at will without damaging the original content. "But it's too 2011 to use hashtags for everyone on Twitter and pile up hashtags on Twitter." "For example, I can #meme #gaymeme #instameme #funny #lol like this on Instagram and put as much as I want," he said. But on Twitter, I won't. 1) It's not cool. 2) All the tags will be mixed up with your text content, which looks messy."

When it comes to social media, aesthetics and convenience are all there is to it. While Twitter has been redesigning, when users complained, Instagram was ahead of the curve, making it an ideal stage to showcase all kinds of meme ideas. After describing the Twitter experience as "cluttered and anxious," Gabriella argues that meme is creative and alternative, and that people like her will always find Instagram more appropriate.

"Instagram feels a little more artistic, just as meme's artistic qualities are more popular on Instagram," she said. Twitter is more focused on propaganda and news attributes, and is more about sharing opinions and positions. Instagram is more focused on fun, beauty, visuals and inspiration."

This article is translated from theverge and published by translator Dkphhh under the Creative Commons License (BY-NC).