Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Now that Instagram has been approved for government use, how should government use it?

When Pinterest was approved for government use, I shared 10 boards I’d like to see (note: #8 is now live!).  Now that GSA has approved Instagram for use by federal agencies, here is a more modest five users/feeds I’d follow:

  1. Department of the Interior.  Look at this. Or this.
  2. Forest Service. By at least one count, there are more than 2,200 types of trees indigenous to North America. The Forest Service could do well to help amateur botanists by tagging the leaves of each type of tree to an image thereof.
  3. Agriculture. The agency already has a Farmer’s Market app and API; how about a hashtag with geolocation so people share images of their favorite markets along with their address?
  4. Defense. Using Instagram’s video feature, demonstrate basic field medicine for campers, using the tag #fieldmed. How to make a splint, for example.
  5. NASA. Because they’re just not active enough on social media, how about an Instagram feed with constellations or images of recently-past astronomical events? (or just things like this)

What Instragram users would you follow?