TECH TUESDAY – International media was a bit befuddled when two spots in Bangkok – Suvarnabhumi Airport and Siam Paragon – landed at the top of the list of the most-Instragrammed locations in the world in 2012.
“The two most popular places for Instagram users are, perhaps surprisingly, in Thailand,” wrote Huffington Post.
“Instagram’s Most Popular Photo Location is … This Airport,” Mashable quipped in a headline alongside a photo of Suvarnabhumi.
The news was perhaps less surprising to those in Thailand who have been following the breakout success of the filtered photo sharing phenomenon. Thai folks have been big on Instagram for quite a while now: In 2011, three Bangkok locations ranked in the top 15 most-Instragrammed locations of that year, more than any other city in the world.
Instagram is easy to use and fast to operate. They’ve minimized pesky words and boiled down the social media experience to what we all really most like to do: Look at pretty pictures. It’s the perfect app for Bangkok’s time-pressed and appearance-obsessed culture.
Thailand’s TV and movie stars have taken a particular shine to the platform and developed impressive followings by uploading photos of their charmed lives, traipsing through luxury malls and swanky parties. The most popular user in Thailand, for example, is actress/model Aum Patcharapa who has an extraordinary 915,000 followers. To put that in perspective, her follower count is pretty close to the numbers that global stars like Beyonce (1.35 million) or Snoop Dogg (1.5 million) are getting – and she’s only famous in one country with around 66 million people. Even Barack Obama only has about double the fans of Aum at 1.9 million!
It must be noted, however, that spambots and fake accounts are prevalent in Thailand. Until recently, photos from local celebrities were speckled with spammy comments in Thai asking followers to “Follow me here!” or “Check out my photos!” Instagram seems to have cleaned things up lately though, and the comments aren’t as common as they were a few weeks ago. Plus, spam is an issue throughout Instagram globally – it’s probably the biggest problem the social network is facing right now – so Snoop definitely has a Lion’s share of fake followers too.
The Siam Center re-opening last week was a veritable pageant of Thai celeb Instagram mania with talk show host Woody Milintachinda, Laotian-Australian heartthrob Ananda Everingham, and V Channel host VJ Woonsen all uploading pics from the event. Siam Center even asked Instagrammers at the grand opening party to hashtag pics with #siamcenter and then displayed those pictures on the fourth floor of the mall. Unscrupulous users might have taken the opportunity to photobomb the party with crotch shots, but as far as I know nothing of the sort happened (thank heavens).
Thai celebs have also unsurprisingly proven extremely adept at promoting products on Instagram. Witness pop singer Ice Sarunyu getting down and dirty doing his laundry with a conspicuously displayed bottle of All detergent, for which he is a brand ambassador. Or Yaya Urrasayas covered in a pile of Lay’s potato chip bags and helpfully tagging the Lay’s Thailand Instagram page in her caption. You’ve probably also seen her endorsing the chips in TV commercials and ads around the BTS.
But it’s the masses of normal people using the app in Bangkok that are really making the platform come alive, flooding it with real-time and geo-located uploads of everyday things happening in this great metropolis. Sure, some might complain that they’ve had enough of the shallow selfpics, doggie snapshots and dreaded food photos – but Instagram is laughing as usage numbers explode.
A Day Magazine made innovative use of the thousands of photos uploaded in Thailand every day with an underground art exhibition crowd-sourced from local Instagrammers last September and October. The mag asked people to use the hashtag #adayinthailand to submit photos and then displayed entries in 10 MRT stations throughout Bangkok, with visually captivating results.
Next time you’re on the BTS or MRT, take a sneak peak over at the person next to you’s smart phone – they will invariably be using one – nine times out of 10 they’re going to be filtering a photo of some spicy somtam or scrolling through pics of local hot babes. OK, that’s probably a bit hyperbolic – but there’s no doubt that Instagram is big stuff in Thailand.
I believe that it’s here to stay too, and not some passing trend like Simsimi or Draw Something. Remember them?
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Tech Tuesday: Whereby Coconuts Bangkok explores the digital world through a local lens.
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