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Instagram is 'No Longer a Photo-Sharing App,' Says Its Head (engadget.com) 36

Posted by msmash from the ship-of-theseus dept.
Instagram doesn't see itself as a platform where people go to share photos anymore. From a report: That's the main takeaway from a series of recent comments made by the head of the company, Adam Mosseri. "We're no longer a photo-sharing app or a square photo-sharing app," Mosseri said in a video he posted to his social media accounts this week. According to Mosseri, the main reason for that is that people come to Instagram "to be entertained," and it's not the only app that offers that in what is a crowded marketplace. "Let's be honest, there's some really serious competition right now," Mosseri said. "TikTok is huge, YouTube is even bigger and there are a lot of other upstarts as well." To stay competitive, Mosseri said Instagram has to embrace that aspect of itself, "and that means change." One way the app will change is with Instagram handing out more recommendations
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Instagram is 'No Longer a Photo-Sharing App,' Says Its Head More

Instagram is 'No Longer a Photo-Sharing App,' Says Its Head

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  • Damn straight (Score:5, Funny)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Friday July 02, 2021 @02:02PM (#61544866)

    We are now the app who does ekki-ekki-ekki-pitang-zoom-boing.

    Which is arguably not much different.

  • Never understood Instragram. Why would I want my pictures to be square to begin with?

    Most of my pictures are landscape 16:9.

    • Never understood Instragram. Why would I want my pictures to be square to begin with?

      Most of my pictures are landscape 16:9.

      Well, not if you're shooting with a Hasselblad V System or other medium format film camera, which is 6x6.

      Don't laugh, there's a huge resurgence in MF film....I didn't get the square format either until I got my Hassy and I have to say, it is a BLAST to shoot. This square format really makes you think differently on composition and works for many shots that a more landscape image wo

      • Don't laugh, there's a huge resurgence in MF film....

        Yes, I'm sure there is a huge resurgence in film among a very small group of people.
        People that would read MF as something other than I do.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        On the other hand, how many people in instagram's demographic have even heard of Hasselblad? Or for that matter, seen actual film in person?

        • On the other hand, how many people in instagram's demographic have even heard of Hasselblad? Or for that matter, seen actual film in person?

          I"m not on social media, so I'd not know first hand.

          But from the sample of MF film shooters on YouTube that mentioned their IG feeds...I'd say there are at least a decent number of them.

          And these people likely were barely alive when film was the thing before digital.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          More to the point, how many people know how to import prints from a Hasselblad camera onto their phones so they can actually post them on Instagram?

          Between the lack of proper desktop support, the lack of plain-old-text posts, and the lack of non-super-short video posts, Instagram is about as useless as anything I've ever encountered.

          Heck, you can't even usefully post a YouTube link to a longer video.

          It's like they deliberately tried to design a system that's as useless as they could possibly make it, someho

    • Originally it was a series of filters to make your nice camera phone look as bad as a polaroid.

    • Never understood Instagram. Why would I want my pictures to be square to begin with?
      Most of my pictures are landscape 16:9.

      I think you misunderstood him... He said:

      We're no longer a photo-sharing app or a square photo-sharing app.

      Meaning (1) "not square" (2) "photo-sharing" (3) "app", which, I assume, means un-hip photo-sharing app. See, if if he was referring to the geometry, he would have said, "no longer ... a square-photo sharing app" ... #HyphensMatter :-)

    • The insta part of the name refers to instant cameras of old - like Polaroid, which had (more or less) square pictures. Not a great justification, and pointless nostalgia aimed at a generation that never used them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tsqr ( 808554 )

      I'm not a frequent Instagram user, but even I know that they haven't limited photos to square format for quite a while now.

  • That's correct (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sebby ( 238625 ) on Friday July 02, 2021 @02:09PM (#61544882)

    Ever since being owned by Facebook, it's become a privacy raping app.

  • If they thought they could get away with it regulatory speaking, Facebook would absolutely have purchased TickTock by now. Providing the usual promises of keeping the company separate, not data sharing, and protecting privacy of course. Then a couple years later reneging on all the promises

  • Facebook v Facebook The fight of the century (Score:3)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Friday July 02, 2021 @02:39PM (#61544980)

    Who are you rooting for to lose the hardest? Personally I hope now that Facebook is competing with Facebook that Facebook gets completely annihilated.

    • Who are you rooting for to lose the hardest? Personally I hope now that Facebook is competing with Facebook that Facebook gets completely annihilated.

      Are you sure they can't take Twitter, TikTok, Instagram and whatever the hell else with them somehow?

  • Since the pandemic began, more and more friends and acquaintances have stopped posting on instagram. I'm sure some of it has to do with people doing less activities, but it's mostly how they changed the way you see photos.

    The recommended barrages you with boring stuff that no one cares about. It's quite bad, and pretty hilarious that they see it as a good thing. It might drive engagement up short term, but long term, people will move away and find a better photo sharing app...

  • "We're transitioning away from millennials taking insipid photos of their dinner plates, clouds and ugly babies to the zoomer audience who are starved for memes, parasocial relationships, vtubers playing video games, and crying about adults calling them out for their Nazi-like behavior online."

  • I liked it originally because it was fuss-free. Just nice pictures I could follow from anyone I'm interested in. If I want to search for something, I could search for something. It had its own recommendations contained within the search page should I have chosen to use it.

    Now I find the app tedious. I hate that I can't just scroll down linearly back in history. If my wife browsed our Instagram before I did, I have to press the magic button before recommendations show up to see everyone's post history.

    It

  • Instagram is no longer shielded via Section 230 and can be held responsible for the users activities in the platform? At least some at Facebook have balls to stand by.

  • Instagram is primarily an app where insecure women go to be sold overpriced makeup and dietary aids and insecure men go to be sold weight lifting supplements. I think there's a few cosplayers and push-up bras there too. Mostly men.
  • Has been for quite some time now.

  • Instagram Never Was A Photo App (Score:3)

    by theshowmecanuck ( 703852 ) on Friday July 02, 2021 @04:51PM (#61545360) Journal
    Instagram is and always has been a 'social media app', with a gimmick (sharing photos taken with your phone). Anyone who actually enjoys photography would use something else. Flickr [flickr.com] as old as it is, is still the best actual photo site for sharing photos; and Smugmug has been doing a good job to upgrade it since they bought it a couple of years ago. If you think about it, why would you take the time to compose really nice photos, a visual art, and then post them someplace you need a jewellers lupe to actually see them? And worse, it doesn't let you post in the format/orientation you want to best show it as (and it won't let you display it landscape with a phone rotation). I think most of the time if you actually blew the pictures on Instagram up to presentable size you'll see how out of focus or otherwise flawed they are. And then there is how much they are compressed. Instagram has always been a place to brag about all the stuff you lie about doing or being, using computer gibbled photos to abet the bullshit. Sites like Flickr are and have always been about presenting and viewing photos, with a bit of social interaction. Even their app display photos far better, full screen and rotatable to view landscape. And they don't compress the shit out of your images. How many folks know that the people who made Flickr (in Vancouver BC) created Slack with the money they made by selling it to Yahoo (who eventually sold it to Smugmug).

    • Photography != Photo App. And sharing photos is not always done because you enjoy photography, as anyone who ever had to sit through a relative showing them slides from their vacation can attest to.

      When Instagram was launched they had basically no features that qualified them for the term "social media" other than a friends list. They certainly are a social media app now, but they weren't always one.

      And worse, it doesn't let you post in the format/orientation you want to best show it as (and it won't let you display it landscape with a phone rotation).

      You think that's bad imagine shooting 35mm film and ending up with 35mm frames. In many cases limiting the as

      • First off, you're an idiot, and probably a shit photographer, and almost certainly an Instagram fanboy who only knows how to use a phone to take pictures. You don't understand that many photos that aren't even in focus will look apparently fine when compressed down to the size of an Instagram pic on a phone. But when viewed at any realistic size will clearly (ha) show as out of focus. And that has nothing to do with the quality of the camera. But as far as the quality of the camera, yes it is important and

        • First off, you're an idiot, and probably a shit photographer

          Happy with either title. At least I'm not a raging presumptuous arsehole. Congratulations on wasting your time. No one read past the text I just quoted? Have a fucktackular weekend shitstain.

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