Sarah's Faves

Want an alert delivered to your inbox each time something from your site is pinned on Pinterest? PinAlerts, still in beta, is like Google Alerts for your FAVE pinnable site.

Sign up is quick and painless and you have the option to add additional websites once your registration is finalized. Don’t have multiple sites? No problem. Add in your competitors to monitor who is pinning what from their site(s). It’s all in the name of competitive analysis.

Once your account is activated you’ll receive simple, bulleted emails with links to the pins, name of the images and date they were pinned.

If the thought of getting more email gives you hives, you can adjust email notification settings.

What can you do with the information? Use it as a pulse check to see which images get the best response, interact with people who care enough to pin your stuff, keep an almost real time grasp on your content and brand reputation. Doesn’t hurt that it’s free.

Check out PinAlerts for yourself and let me know what you think.

It was only a matter of time before I FAVED about Facebook’s ONE BILLION DOLLAR Instagram acquisition. What is Facebook getting for all that dough? Let’s take a look at the actual numbers…

Created by Online MBA Programs

In an animated infographic created by blogger and digital media producer Greg Voakes, he shares  the top stats that make Instagram the most coveted app on the block. If you don’t have time to click “next” to see all of the stats, I’ve included my recap, below.

Here are a few of my personal FAVES:

• 1 billion photos have been uploaded via Instagram. Guess what the majority of them are? Food!
•  In the Facebook iPhone app, it takes six screens before you can take a picture to upload. With Instagram, it only takes one.
• 5 million photos are shared each and every day.
• The Instagram team has made $0 in revenue, yet sold the company for $1 billion.
• The New York Times is 116 years and is valued at around $967 million. Instagram is 551 days old and is now worth $1 billion.
• Instagram’s CEO Kevin Systrom will take home a big pay check of $400 million. Yowza!

Like this animated infographic? Me too. Go ahead and share it with your friends.

(You can find me on Instagram as @sarahevans.)

Postagram lets you send a printed Instagram photo the old fashioned way (remember your mailbox?) to people you really like. Plus it makes mail carriers everywhere happy.

NEED: iPhone or Droid
NEED: Instagram account

Use the Postagram app, or the site if you don’t have a phone on hand, to: get a print of an Instagram photo, send a memorable print to a friend or to create a personalized greeting card. The best part? Every photo is perforated so people can “pop it out” and save it as a souvenir. Sounds like prime real estate to throw in a nice quote or a company logo on that photo.

In fact, here’s another tip. Next time you’re at a conference or networking event, grab a mailing address from the person(s) you’re hanging with. Take a photo together, send out photos at the end of the day. When they get back to the office they’ll get a nice reminder of your meeting.

How it works:

• Upload your photo to the app or the site
• Add an optional 140 character message
• Pay $.99 (you’d pay more if you bought an actual post card)
• Wait two to five business days for it to make the recipient smile

For iPhone.

For Droid.

(h/t @TarynP)

Weekend Hashtag Project: #soloparking http://t.co/wEeq96e8

January 30, 2012 1:01 pm via AssistlyReplyRetweetFavorite

@instagram

Instagram

Looking for more fun ways to use Instagram that don’t only involve photos of your breakfast, lunch and dinner? Then you’ll love Weekend Hashtag Project run by the Instagram team. Meet new people, join in a community and reach more with your photos. Sound peachy?

Right from Instagram:

Weekend Hashtag Project is a series featuring designated themes & hashtags chosen by Instagram’s Community Team. For a chance to be featured on the Instagram blog, follow @jayzombie and look for a photo from her announcing the weekend’s project every Friday. Every Monday we feature some of our favorites from the project, here.

What’s a hashtag project? Last week’s theme was #soloparking, a project that asked participants to look for modes of transportation parked all by themselves. People took pictures of these items, uploaded to Instagram and added the hashtag in their comments.

Planes, trains and automobiles anyone?

Go have some fun!

Have a FAVE you think I should feature? Send to ilovefaves@gmail.com. I <3 email.