Looking for identification guides for taxa for which I don’t have field guides. The identification guides were all I knew of iNaturalist for quite some time.
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Welcome to the forum, @account120!
I also found out about iNat through that video during the pandemic (somewhere around July). I was already a bit into nature + it was monsoon which meant nature was everywhere around me, so soon after trying it out I seriously for into it! And now here I’m, addicted to it! 
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Welcome
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Me too. I had already heard of it before that, but I didn’t sign up until after that video.
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I was in 7th grade when the pandemic started last year. My school switched to entirely-online, and one of the teachers assigned his class a bioblitz as homework. We were supposed to make an account and add photos to the website. (I would like to point out that I was the only one who did it.) I don’t think I was actually expected to keep using iNat, but I really liked it and decided to stay. I have now been here for almost exactly a year - 368 days!
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I had built myself a database in about 1998 with MS Access that I was importing life list images of fauna - I had arranged it so that I could add things to a tree of life but it was incredibly manual. I planned to add to it more once I retired and maybe travel and see some things over a 5 year plan - rather than see the 7 wonders of the world. In 2015 I was trying to identify an image of something to species. I had been looking at the Encyclopdia of Life and Map of Life. I thought there had to be something else, maybe a better way. I did a search on a website like similarsites.com and, Hey Presto - here I am.
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people talked about it in nature walks and things like that, so after a while I decided to try it out!
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Same!
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Welcome to the Forum!
My spouse saw iNat mentioned in a story in our local paper and thought I might like it (I was sort of at loose ends at the time). As @raymie says, I came for the science and stayed for the community!
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During my trip to the Antarctic, at one moment or other, I learned of Inaturalist. When I came back in beginning 2020, I started out uploading observations, then my earlier ones and now actively hunting. And although I normally travel a lot (work and pleasure) now more than a year without new places…
Still love it.
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haha, my first observations were of potted plants so I can relate
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I found out about iNaturalist through a Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-LjzKx-u9g
I used to game a lot, but now that’s been replaced with this other game of finding more species!
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I found out about iNaturalist when I was helping to teach a nature photography class. There was supposed to be a bio-blitz after the class that used iNat, but it ended up being canceled due to inclement weather.
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I used to play computer. I can’t remember the last time I played one! Right! Adding IDs and observations! Got it!
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I think I first heard about it from the American Birding Podcast. I immediately checked it out and have been using it ever since (although usage ranges from 1-2 years of tons of identifying to more recently slacking off in identifying and just getting photos for observations while I’m already out in nature birding)
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I don’t remember how I first heard of iNaturalist.
I saw intermittent mentions of it every now and then on Facebook (think it was the Friends of Tokai Park page?) and maybe elsewhere, and those occasional reminders eventually piqued my interest. I started my account in December 2019 or thereabouts and began posting observations seriously from maybe January 2020, just in time for the pandemic!
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I wanted to make an album to share online of Korean animals with ‘shaman’ (무당) in their name and noticed several of the Creative Commons images for Bombina orientalis (무당개구리) I came across were from iNaturalist. That got me to check out the site and I immediately became hooked.
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Friends of Tokai Park on FB is also Tony Rebelo. who encouraged South Africa from iSpot to iNat. And then the City Nature Challenges.
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HK Moths recommended iNaturalist in a Mothing group on facebook, when i first started out getting hooked on taking Moth pictures and had no idea how to ID them
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