It took nine years for the New Horizon spacecraft to reach Pluto – and far less than an hour for NASA to demonstrate the power and reach of Instagram. For a full hour before NASA shared the first Pluto image through their website, it was available through Instagram. They were an instant hit, with hundreds of thousands of people liking and sharing the image, which shows a prominent light-colored heart shape on the planet’s surface.

[Tweet “Knowledge becomes sweeter when we acquire it before anyone else we know.”]

There has been some discussion about whether NASA, a publicly funded agency, should allow any private business, such as the Facebook-owned Instagram, exclusive early access to its imagery. What’s inarguable, however, is the appeal of the sneak peek.

Knowledge becomes sweeter when we acquire it before anyone else we know. When we know something first, we gain a form of social currency; it is more prestigious to be the disseminator of information than the recipient of it. Gossip and insider trading are both examples of people gaining a competitive advantage by acting on information prior to it becoming common knowledge; on one hand the leg up is social, in the other, financial.

People turn to social media because they want to know things – and if they know things first, so much the better. The Pew Internet and American Life project has documented the increasingly important role Facebook and Twitter have as news sources; NASA has now made it clear that Instagram is a viable player in the breaking news game as well.

Nasa’s Image of Pluto

If you’re using Instagram as part of your digital marketing strategy, ask yourself if you’re fully leveraging it as a platform for sneak peeks. You might not be the first to fly over a distant planet’s surface, but you can be the first to show off a designer’s look in your region, or the first to introduce a new product, or to see what your business renovation looks like before anyone else sees it. Sharing that information with your Instagram followers can generate buzz and excitement well in advance of any official pronouncements you may make.