Why I am not excited about the latest Instagram update

Instagram is one of the social network I thoroughly enjoy using and browsing regularly. It has given me a whole new perspective on what the world looks like – when your sole attention is focused on one little non-scalable square. As a hobby photographer, I have come to love the full focus perspective.

Social media networks all have their own type of ‘charm’ to them. Not only do they serve different purposes, they also initially stand for something unique. Today, Instagram has just lost a whole lot of uniqueness with one little update.

A new perspective

Today, Instagram launched an update for its iOS and Android apps that I’m not all that happy about. Bye bye squared images… Hello regular photos and videos.

I do not really understand why they’ve done it though. I would even go as far as to say that the heart and soul of Instagram community is at stake here. The reasoning behind it is that Instagram claim 1/5 images that are posted at the moment are already ‘non-squares’ and they want to make it easier and faster for anyone to post an image to the network plus videos look a whole lot better when they are not squared.

Especially the statement about the accessibility is a non-arguement in my opinion, because the whole point of the app is that you actually spend a few minutes to think about what it is going to look like when you post it.

I am afraid that this will be the beginning of random horrible snapshot holiday pictures on Instagram

Sure it is in the name: INSTAgram, the purpose of posting something on Instagram is to show that it is in the moment and instantly there. But nothing has stopped anyone in the community from posting instantly before, so what is the big difference?

Most importantly: why change something people love? If I would want to post regular images to a social network I can do that on Facebook, right?

Are you going to give it a shot?

I had really hoped that Instagram would be one of the first social networks that did not want to tailor to the needs of ‘everyone’ but could focus on that huge group of great fans it already has within its community.
Maybe it will not be as bad as I think… Let’s wait and see what my stream will look like in a few days.

For now, I will continue to share my instagram posts in the regular squared format. Call me nostalgic, or stubborn, but I don’t care 😝.