You know I love Twitter. I love it. My love of Twitter burns with the brightness of seven suns and a hot cup of tea on a cold morning. I don’t even know what that means, but what I want you to know is that I love Twitter. I love blogs too and sometimes Facebook has something of interest for me, but what I love most is TWITTER!

For the past few years, I’ve wondered what’s next, post-Twitter. Location-based sharing has yet to set me or anyone else on fire and if I had a nickel for every social networking site that I’ve had the mild enthusiasm to namestead on but never return to, I’d have a million nickels. Or maybe a few hundred nickels. Like ten nickels. I’d have fifty cents.

My point: there’s a new social networking site that I LOVE LOVE LOVE. LOVE! It’s Instagr.am.

On the surface it doesn’t look like much. Maybe a newfangled twitpic with filters. But if there’s anything that screams THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL MEDIA, it’s this site. Here’s why: Instagram is the first site that lets you create something on the site and then share it with your friends. Is there another site that you can use to create in the cloud and then share in real time? Tell me if I’m missing one. Nicely.

With Instagram, you can share two ways—you can follow people like you do on Flickr, but unlike Flickr, you can also use Instagram like you do Twitter and watch the feed of your followers’ pictures flow past.

Instagram also lets you share your photos on Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Tumblr, and Foursquare. Imagine a whole Tumblr blog with your Instagram pictures! How cool and fun! And also back away from the Internet because I’m going to do that! No. You can do that too. I guess.

Instagram is fairly limited. It’s only available for iPhone users, and you can only use their filters and it seems to me that you can only access your feed on your phone. But like Twitter has shown us, creativity thrives within boundaries.

I’m having a lot of fun with Instagram. I think if there are more social sharing sites that let you create with their tools and check out what your friends are creating in real time, plus allow you to share your creations with your communities on other social channels, I say bring it on.

These are some of my Instagram pictures. Are you checking out Instagram? If so, what do you think? And hey—add me! I’m melissalion.