What is a Selfie?
A selfie is a self-portrait photo, typically taken with a mobile phone or computer camera.
The term "selfie" is a shortening of what's commonly known as a self portrait. Selfies are taken by turning the lens to the photographer, instead of pointing the lens at a subject. Seflies that include multiple people in one photo are known as “group selfies”. Selfies are usually posted to a social media site, like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.
Notable Selfies
The use of selfies has become a phenomenon of pop culture in the second decade of the twenty-first century. Some of the most famous people known for taking and posting selfies are Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus. But even well-known people who don't involve themselves with social media on a regular basis have been known to take a selfie or two, including President Barack Obama. Other note-worthy selfies include the selfie astronaut Aki Hoshide took while in outer space, and one taken by National Geographic photographer Jimmy Chin as he was stuck on a ledge halfway up a 3,000 foot cliff in Oman after his rope was sliced in two by some sharp rocks.
Year of the Selfie
Self-portraiture has existed for centuries, but thanks to the prevalence of smartphone ownership and the ability to post photos to social media, 2013 has been dubbed as “The Year of the Selfie” by Oxford English Dictionary. They've even officially added the term to the current English dictionary. It has been estimated that close to 1 trillion photographs will be taken in 2014, due in large part to the explosion of the selfie phenomenon.
The taking of self-portraits for social media purposes began with the 2005-2008 popularity of social media network MySpace and became known as the “MySpace Pic”. In 2009, Facebook overtook MySpace in virtual traffic and encouraged more self-portraits thanks to its design that provided for a higher quality profile picture.
What triggered their popularity
When Apple released the popular iPhone 4 in 2010, a new feature was the front-facing camera. Included in the iPhone 4 for video calls, this new camera could also be used to point the lens toward the user, without the need to turn the camera around. This allowed the user to custom frame their self-portrait, adding to the growth of the selfie in 2010. The following year, the exponential growth of Instagram popularity further encouraged social media users to take and post selfies, even adding photographic filters which allowed users to edit contrast, brightness, and color tones of their photos.
A new buzzword from 2004
While the term selfie was first mentioned on the social media site Flickr in 2004, its notoriety began in late 2012, and the term quickly grew into a social media buzzword.