'WE RECOGNIZE INDIVIDUALS WHO EPITOMISE INSTAGRAM'S BEST'

Facebook’s photo and video-sharing social networking service, Instagram announced the second edition of the ‘Instagrammer of the Year’ awards. The winners represent individuals who have best embraced the platform’s power of visual story-telling and engagement with fans, while also building a strong community across its different surfaces. This year, Bollywood actor Priyanka Chopra was named the most followed account on the platform, while cricket star Virat Kohli was the most engaged account of the year. Other winners were actor Deepika Padukone (Story-teller of the Year), actor Sara Ali Khan (Rising Star Account), Chef Pooja Dhingra (Food Account), comedian and singer, Bhuvan Bham (Entertainment Account) and fashion blogger Sejal Kumar (Fashion Account). Saket Jha Saurabh, Head, Entertainment Partnerships, Facebook India tells us more about the awards and adds that users can look forward to a lot of new features and products on Instagram.

ON THE INSIGHT BEHIND THE INSTAGRAMMER OF THE YEAR AWARDS: The Instagrammer of the Year awards are a way for us to recognize creators who bring their personalities to the platform while expressing themselves. This is basically our way of recognising individuals who epitomise the best of the platform. They bring in their personalities while expressing themselves and they have highly engaged communities. We have used data on the platform for the year 2018 to evaluate how various individuals have performed on Instagram and the seven award winners are basically some of the most followed and engaged creators on our platform. The greater idea really is to tell people what good can look like on our platform.

WHAT’S NEXT FROM INSTAGRAM: We recently launched IGTV, which is our vertical video surface. The response to some of these introductions such as Instagram Live, stickers and the like has been great and it’s safe to say that some of the products that have been tested or launched globally will make their way to India soon. I don’t have a launch announcement to make yet but I have to say the Instagram community is definitely thriving and we will keep launching new products, or surfaces as we call them.