The Top Twenty most Instagrammed lakes in the world

Italy's Lake Como is stunningly beautiful and eclectic
(Courtesy: Pixabay)

CHARLOTTE, NC— Instagram launched in October 2010, and became an "instant" overnight success when a million registered users signed on in just two months. Within a year it was up to 10 million users and, as of May 2019, a billion people had registered.

Created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, Instagram is a photo and video-sharing social media networking service owned by Facebook in which an account's posts can be shared publicly or with pre-approved followers. Users can browse other users' content by tags and locations, and view trending content. They can also "like" photos and follow other users to add their content to a feed.

To help users discover both photos and each other, "hashtags" were introduced in January 2011. Today, Instagram encourages users to make tags both specific and relevant, rather than tagging generic words like "photo", to make photographs stand out and to attract like-minded Instagram users.

The UK's Lake District took top honors
(Courtesy: pixabay)

As of the new year, the most-followed person on Instagram is footballer Cristiano Ronaldo with over 196 million followers, while the most popular woman is singer Ariana Grande at more than 170 million.

The most liked photo on Instagram as of January 14, 2019  is a "picture of an egg," posted by the account @world_record_egg. Created for the sole purpose of surpassing the previous record of 18 million likes on a Kylie Jenner post, the picture currently has over 53 million likes.

Scotland's Loch Ness, home of the legendary Nessie monster
(Courtesy: pixabay)

With that information as background, Showerstoyou.co.uk decided to discover the most "Instagrammable" lakes around the world to help travelers decide where to go on their next picturesque trip.

Choosing lakes throughout the world, Showerstoyou.co.uk set about the task of gathering the number of hashtags per lake in order to identify which would make the best Instagram-worthy place to visit next.

Nevada's Lake Tahoe
(Courtesy: pixabay)

First place honors went to the popular Lake District in the UK with 2,951,548 hashtags.

The top choice was immediately embroiled in controversy since the area is made up of a multitude of lakes rather than a single body of water. Showers To You explained their decision by "taking (the Lake District) as a whole due to the fact it is well known for its glacial ribbon bodies of water."

Also counted among the top ten was the UK’s Loch Ness. The famous Scottish Lake, which is home to the legendary Loch Ness Monster, ranks ninth overall with over 500,000 photos added to the ‘gram.

The United States rates second and third on the list with Lake Tahoe taking the number two position and Lake Michigan number three. Both have well over 2 million, 2 hundred thousand hits. Notably the first three spots are the only ones with 2 million or more images.

Lake Erie lighthouse -- The Great Lakes took 4 of the first
twelve places  (Courtesy: pixabay)

Also impressively, the Great Lakes captured four of the first twelve positions; 3--Lake Michigan (2,208,442), 6--Lake Erie (863,446), 7--Lake Superior (832,139), 12--Lake Huron (377,916) Ironically, Lake Ontario did not make the list at all.

Italy's Lake Como is a surprising 4th with 1,412,597 Instagrams. By the way, Lake Como is the fifth deepest lake in Europe.

Yet another surprise rounds out the top five with the Dead Sea in Israel, Jordan and Palestine garnering 1,137,909 hashtags.

Of the top 20 most instagrammed lakes, the United States has seven. Only three other countries rate more than one as Russia, Bolivia and the UK each have two.

Lake Titicaca in Bolivia
(Courtesy: pixabay)

Perhaps the best known lakes with the lowest totals are 18th ranked Lake Titicaca in Peru and Bolivia (110,703) followed by Lake Victoria in Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Burundi and Rwanda. With 51,888 'grams Lake Victoria takes 19th position.

Bolivia's Languna Colorado rounds out the top twenty with 38,462 votes.

And just for the record, Veronica Lake missed the cut completely.