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Part 3 – Can We #ThrowbackThursday Our Way to the Old Instagram?

Ariel Aarenau
Dec 12, 2022 (published February 9, 2023) · 7 min read
Founded in 2010 by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, Instagram was an instant success. The app reached over one million users just two months after its release and reached ten million users in its first year (Constine, 2018).  In some respects, its success should have been anything but a surprise: Mark Zuckerberg was an early courter, Jack Dorsey was an avid user, and Marc Andreessen and Chris Sacca had advised from the sidelines (Frier, 2020). The motley crew of industry titans all had their eyes on Instagram and its talented founders. In 2013, Krieger and Systrom said yes to Zuckerberg’s proposal and officially wed to Facebook for $1 billion in cash and stock with a plan to keep Instagram independently operated (TechCrunch, 2012).
2013 also happens to be the year I joined Instagram, my first social media app. Instagram opened my eyes to digital media and storytelling – a field in which I later chose to focus my studies and pursue a career. Instagram, in its own strange way, held a special place in my heart.

I have been using the platform for close to a decade and have always stayed on top of its product changes. There have been many of these changes over its lifetime, some better received than others, but the app’s latest round of changes has sparked unprecedented outrage. Headlines summing up user reaction include, “Instagram Sucks Now, Sorry” (Thomas, 2022), “Instagram is currently in its flop era” (Cavender, 2022), and “Adam Mosseri [Head of Instagram] confirms it: Instagram is over” (Lopatto, 2022).

How did Instagram go from being the beloved app that even Facebook could not tarnish to Meta’s Hail Mary attempt to stay relevant in the face of TikTok and BeReal?

Understanding what made Instagram unique is a good place to start. Much like Facebook, Twitter, and other successful social media apps, Instagram was once something special. “There’s something around photos,” said co-founder Kevin Systrom when workshopping what Instagram should be (Frier, 2020). Sarah Frier reported that the app was founded on solving three key challenges facing photo-sharing at the time as well as integrating constraints into the product that focus on breeding creativity (Ibid). Over the years, these founding principles were notably altered or removed one-by-one. The most dramatic of course was in 2015 when Instagram announced it was dropping the requirement to have photos fit its iconic 1:1 aspect ratio/square format (Stinson, 2015).

Other notable constraints included the fact that the app was mobile only, and that unlike other social platforms, users could not share another user’s post. Both of these constraints are no longer in place today. Of course, it was not the removal of these constraints that caused a divide between Instagram and its users. Product evolution is imperative to any app’s long-term success and viability. There are several examples of companies and products that failed to innovate and evolve, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer being a well-known case study. The key is to never lose that something that made your product special to begin with. Successful product evolutions are those that are aligned with that something; they improve, add, or augment it. Instagram’s adoption of Stories is arguably one of the best product evolutions in history. Stories, a form of ephemeral storytelling first released by Snapchat, was soon copied with great success by Instagram. This is not the first time a social media app cloned a popular feature found within one of its competitors’ apps. In fact, it often does not work. LinkedIn’s Stories feature launched in February 2020 and was phased out in September 2021 (Peters, 2021). Fleets, Twitter’s attempt to launch transient storytelling, was just that: a fleeting moment in time that lasted less than a year (Rodriguez, 2021)

In the case of Instagram, Stories are at the heart of the app – they feel native to the experience. Stories afforded users another way to share photos, this time with the creative constraints of its vertical format and differentiated posting method (expiration). Beyond the flawless execution by Zuckerberg and his team, the success of Stories can be attributed to its alignment with Instagram as a product. After all, Meta’s other subsidiary Facebook also offers a Stories feature, and it is as unremarkable as LinkedIn’s (Beres, 2021).

Unfortunately, Stories is where Instagram’s A+ product development ends. A recent headline in the Wall Street Journal sums up the ongoing situation: “‘Make Instagram Instagram Again’: The App’s Evolution Is Causing Users to Question Its Future” (Bruening, 2022). Significant changes to the algorithm, the ranking of posts in Feed, and its shift to video have made users very upset, with one saying, “[It] is headed for social media purgatory, joining MySpace, [and] Facebook” (Thomas, 2022). The once photo sharing-focused app known for its elegant design, creative constraints, and social graph status is in the midst of a serious identity crisis. “Instagram wants to do everything — become a destination where users create and watch short-form video content; shop for things they don’t really need but definitely want; and share snippets of their lives in Stories,” says Elana Cavendar, a tech reporter and resident Gen Z expert at Mashable (Cavender, 2022). Cavendar is referring to the numerous product changes and additions ranging from shopping to video-sharing. She says the evolution has Instagram “losing sight of why young users liked it in the first place” (Ibid). Instagram’s shift to be the everything platform has veered it from its initial purpose and distinctiveness.

This story is of course all too familiar. One tech journalist hit the nail on the head when she said, “It’s funny to see Instagram Facebookify because no one wants to use Facebook either” (Lopatto, 2022). Unsurprisingly, none of these evolutions were welcomed by users. “The platform I used to love now won’t let me scroll two thumbs without showing me a random melting burrata, flat renovation or dropshipped dress to buy,” reads a Vice article from July (Thomas, 2022). As users witness Instagram “on the same downward trajectory” that plagued Facebook, Instagram – which launched its TikTok clone Reels in August 2020 – has only increased the prominence and prevalence of its unwelcomed video-sharing feature in the app (Cavender, 2022). While Instagram has had video capabilities since 2013 and at one point launched IGTV (which was subsequently phased out), it never altered its user interface or ranking of posts in Feed to favour video to the extent that it has with Reels (Taylor, 2013). Instagram’s latest round of product changes in July 2022 largely focused on Reels, sparking outrage from everyday users, influencers, and high-profile celebrities like the Kardashians.
In an effort to address the situation, Mosseri posted a video in which he admits that the changes “are not yet good” but largely dismissed users’ reactions (Moserri, 2022). Needless to say, his video and subsequent Tweet storm did not go over well. Journalist Elizabeth Lopatto may have summarized it best when she said, “Sounding like an exhausted parent, Mosseri agreed that Instagram’s new feed sucked and its recommendations might be bad and then told us it wasn’t going to get better. Instagram no longer cares about photos” (Lopatto, 2022).

This line by Lopatto says it all. The photo sharing app, the one Systrom and Krieger created with three photo-based goals in mind, has users feeling like they no longer care about the very thing that made it a success. Instagram is lost.

Ariel Aarenau is in his final year of the Bachelor of Media Production and Design program at Carleton University where he is also minoring in Business. The fusion of digital media, design thinking, and innovative business technologies combines both his strengths and passions. He currently works at Deloitte as a Business Analyst focusing on digital strategy, innovation, and transformation advisory projects. Prior to joining Deloitte, Ariel held roles in Multimedia Services at the House of Commons of Canada, Marketing and Business Development for Deloitte Israel, and the Digitally Assisted Storytelling division of Carleton Immersive Media Studio.

References

Beres, D. (2021, October 29). Seriously, no one is using Facebook stories. Mashable. Retrieved November 14, 2022, from https://mashable.com/article/no-one-uses-facebook-stories

Bruening, T. (2022, July 28). ‘Make Instagram Instagram again’: The app’s evolution is causing users to question its future. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved November 14, 2022, from https://www.wsj.com/articles/make-instagram-instagram-again-the-apps-evolution-is-causing-users-to-question-its-future-11658921581

Cavender, E. (2022, January 11). Instagram is currently in its Flop Era. Mashable. Retrieved November 14, 2022, from https://mashable.com/article/instagram-flop-era

Constine, J. (2018, June 20). Instagram hits 1 billion monthly users, up from 800m in September. TechCrunch. Retrieved November 14, 2022, from https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/20/instagram-1-billion-users/

Facebook buys Instagram for $1 billion, turns budding rival into its standalone photo app. TechCrunch. (2012, April 9). Retrieved November 14, 2022, from https://techcrunch.com/2012/04/09/facebook-to-acquire-instagram-for-1-billion/

Frier, S. (2020). No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram. Simon & Schuster.

Lopatto, E. (2022, July 26). Adam Mosseri confirms it: Instagram is over. The Verge. Retrieved November 14, 2022, from https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/26/23279815/instagram-feed-kardashians-criticism-fuck-it-im-out

Mossari, A. [@mosseri]. (2022, July 22). There’s a lot happening on Instagram right now. [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/mosseri/status/1551890839584088065

Peters, J. (2021, August 31). LinkedIn gives up on stories. The Verge. Retrieved November 14, 2022, from https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/31/22650740/linkedin-stories-ephemeral-video-shut-down

Rodriguez, S. (2021, July 14). Twitter to kill fleets feature, its competitor to Facebook Stories. CNBC. Retrieved November 14, 2022, from https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/14/twitter-to-kill-fleets-feature-its-competitor-to-facebook-snapchat-stories.html

Stinson, L. (2015, August 27). Instagram ends the tyranny of the square. Wired. Retrieved November 14, 2022, from https://www.wired.com/2015/08/instagram-says-goodbye-square-photos/

Taylor, C. (2013, June 20). Instagram launches 15-second video sharing feature, with 13 filters and editing. TechCrunch. Retrieved November 14, 2022, from https://techcrunch.com/2013/06/20/facebook-instagram-video/

Thomas, H. M. (2022, July 26). Instagram sucks now, sorry. VICE. Retrieved November 14, 2022, from https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvmnvw/why-everyone-hates-instagram-now

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