Kim Kardashian, Ann Romney, Justin Bieber, and the Top Celebrities and Politicians On Pinterest and Instagram

Culture

To Pinterest or to Instagram? That is the question! If you’re like me, you’re probably undecided between the Kodak Polaroid-inspired photo editing and sharing mobile application Instagram and the pinboard-style photo categorizing and sharing website (and mobile application) Pinterest. Look no further, Kim Kardashian, Ann Romney, and other top celebities and politicians who have recently joined the two hottest online photo-sharing services to date will help us decide (but only if we have to). 

• Kim Kardashian (KimKardashian on Instagram): The queen of reality-television chose Instagram to edit and share her midnight pouting pictures with her more than 13 million Twitter followers. The Polaroid-inspired app, which CEO Kevin Systrom was featured in the Super Bowl 2012 Best Buy commercial “Phone Innovators,” allows Kardashian to add "layers of nostalgia" to her old-school swimming pool family photos through the use of filters such as “1977,” “Sierra” and “Early Bird.” The downside? As a mobile application only, Instagram is not accessible from laptop and PC computers.

• Ann Romney (AnnRomney on Pinterest): The wife of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney chose the online photo curating, categorizing, and sharing website and mobile app Pinterest to publish much needed family photos of the Republican presidential candidate candidly sharing with family and friends. Mrs. Romney’s boards, with names such as “Patriotic” and “Inspirational,” will seek to repair the damage progressive blog Think Progress made to the Romney campaign when it published its own Pinterest board with images of upscale resorts and hotels where the Romneys have allegedly vacationed.

• President Barack Obama (BarackObama on Instagram): The reelection campaign of President Barack Obama continues its masterful use of social media with the Obama 2012 Instagram account opened last January 3 (the day of the 2012 Iowa Caucuses) and managed by the president’s reelection staff. Obama’s joining prompted an Instagram blog entry in which CEO Kevin Systrom highlighted the role that both politicians and mainstream news organizations such as NBC News will have providing a behind the scenes look of the 2012 election through the use of Instagram.

• Newt Gingrich (NewtGingrich on Pinterest): The former Speaker of the House of Representatives and volatile 2012 Republican presidential candidate continues spreading thin the resources of his unique-donor supported campaign by joining Pinterest and “pinning” a series of official campaign photos that so far have failed to attract many followers or “re-pinners.” However, that might change if Gingrich, who seems to have regained some composure during the latest CNN Republican Presidential Debate from Arizona, makes some gains during the upcoming round of primaries and caucuses.

• Justin Bieber (JustinBieber on Instagram): "The Bieber" joined Instagram on July 2011 with a first photo captioned “LA traffic sucks” and immediately clogged the service with an outstanding influx of 50 followers a minute and one comment every 10 second or so, according to Systrom. Instagram claims they didn’t reach out to Bieber in order to make him use the service but rather that the singer himself did it spontaneously in a kind of celebrity endorsing and publicity that money can’t buy. Bieber is more influential than President Barack Obama, at least online, as he has a Klout of 100, which is the maximum ranking by a San Francisco-based company that provides social media analytics to measure a user’s influence across his or her social network.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons