@benjaminnetter Squares are still default (and likely will remain dominant). Squares were great for getting us here, but we see 20%+ of photos now have white borders...skate to where the puck is going :)
@mikeyk People need rules to stick to something. Look at religions for example. Squares were your main rule and one of the reasons I fell in love with Instagram four years ago.
@mikeyk I welcome this move. I'm definitely a user that has a bunch of photos with white borders and follow a bunch of folks who do the same thing. if a square or any specific aspect ratio works better for a photo, then it's great I have the flexibility to do that now without the "Instafit" step I used to do previously.
Side note: this is a great opportunity for me to go back and revisit old photos and potentially re-post in the new format.
@mikeyk It's similar to the argument of using a poetic structure vs freestyle. Sure, haikus can be limiting, but that makes the format all the more fun. Aesthetically, I like the idea of eliminating bars, but I think that the uniformity of the format is one of Instagram's strengths.
I'm not crazy. I'm not going to proclaim this the death of Instagram. I'm just going to say that I don't really agree with the change.
@mikeyk I have been impressed with the very clean design you have on web. It seems like your approach early on was simply displaying content when linked, but now it is actually pleasant to browse through someone's IG feed on the web. Have you ever, or will you now, share the percentages between web traffic and mobile traffic for content consumption? Everyone's screaming mobile first, but I'm wondering how the web is treating you.
@mikeyk And since a lot of us are creators around here, what is an interesting hurdle you had to overcome technically as you hit scale? I recently integrated some of Path's Fast Image Cache into my app because of issues with scrolling performance on iOS. These were not issues I had ever faced before and I'm sure I'm going to have more like this.
@mikeyk I am delighted about this update. And if it was indeed to where the puck was going (20% of photos had bars), what percentage of photos are using a 3rd party to basically hack a repost function? (hint hint 😉)
@mikeyk Updated to 7.5... don't see how to upload portrait photos. Interface looks the same as before (ie, only option to crop to square). Is this US-only update? (Australia here)
@mikeyk I'm impressed with how little the product has changed since it blew up years ago. While you've added a lot of improvements, the core of what makes IG one of my favorite apps, remains the same. How do you balance taking risks with big product changes and staying true to what makes IG loved?
@rrhoover a large part is learning from the community. We added hashtags way back when because people had started to use multiple accounts to organize collections, Direct because people wanted a way to communicate 1:1, photo tags because people were using the captions. And non-square because 20% of photos already were :)
@mikeyk makes sense! We've taken similar cues from the Product Hunt community.
Collections were created when we saw several people bookmarking and saving products they found to trello boards, wunderlist lists, and other tools.
LIVE is an extension of the conversations we've had with maker since PH first launched.
@mikeyk Regarding the community, early on some professional photographers were reluctant to post on Instagram (either out of copyright concerns or because filters weren't their thing). Now there is a very strong professional presence. What won over the standouts? Was it the promise of large audience, a particular product change, or a team effort to bring on influential photographers?
@mikeyk Liking the new formats!
Speaking of multiple accounts, will you ever support this in the app? It's a pain to have your personal one and manage one or more for you business. Sorry if this has been covered already.
Also, what's the *magic trick* to make a logo as profile image look good? I've tried a lot of different combinations, but all of them are compressed too much. It seems some (brands mostly e.g. Nike) uses a different image CDN, which might be the reason.
@calc a combination of audience and also learning over time how an IG presence can be complementary instead of in opposition to a professional presence
It might seem like a minor change but this opens up more possibilities for brands and content creators to share existing content inside Instagram. @mikeyk shared this link to this Star Wars trailer (nice cross-promotion 😉) on Twitter a minute ago:
@rrhoover it should be very powerful for the travel industry and potentially instagram video ads as well. We work with a lot of companies in this space so we know a thing or two about that ;)
Love the fact that Instagram finally figured out how to make portraits and landscapes happen. Given how central instagram is to photographers, this was a big hole in functionality that I felt was open for way too long. Though, I feel, some purists will hate this :)
@dfindles Oh, man, my 13 year old niece was laughing at me the other day because I was trying to zoom into a photo on IG. She said, "Dad tried to do the same thing, you guys are silly.".. Are we silly!?
@mikeyk Just reported a problem inside the IG app because I didn't see the icon. I guess that's the "Product Hunt" world we live in -- knowing about features before they are released to the full user base haha. Looking forward to using this feature!
@parkeragee Yeah, I don't see it either yet. Updated to 7.5 as of today but no luck. I'm using the Finnish version of the app. I wonder if the non-US versions get this later on or is this just a bug? :)
Oh hey, @mikeyk, I like how the new change can open up better sharing to other networks. But, Instagram still doesn't support the native share sheet on iOS and when you copy the share URL the landing page doesn't have any OG markup so FB Messenger, Slack, etc. can't preview any content inline.
Thoughts on improving any of these sharing off-network areas?
@mikeyk awesome update and very exciting in the platform's evolution. One of the biggest aspects of this change is the ability to keep videos in landscape. Do you see Instagram going into long form video?
Finally! But square photos is something Instagram rediscovered. They made every mobile manufacturer on Earth include a square mode in their default photography app. Square made them unique. Not sure why they had to do this. They have come a full circle and become an average photo sharing app.
I guess it was inevitable that they needed to make things landscape. There are already apps to "square" your landscape photos, so I guess they wanted to make sure no one else did this first. After all it is quite the travesty to film in portrait. I'm on the fence about this new feature, I had a love/hate relationship with that square as an amateur photographer and a reluctant iphoneographer.
@randibarry I think twitter still takes the cake on this one. The ease of switching is amazing. This has been wanted by nearly everyone i know that uses instagram for years.
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