14 ms·

Instagram Is Over

193 points by dailo10 4y ago

jumpkick 4y ago
I wonder if there’s a market for small app, limited in scope, knock off of the original Instagram. $1/month.
- pipeline_peak 4y ago
  I’m sure there’s many but in the world of social media, content is key and users are what make that happen. I tried using Peer Tube recently, felt like I was on 2005 YouTube...absolute no man’s land
- BbzzbB 4y ago
  There are reasons why IG has 2B people, part of which is not charging $1/month.
  - rglullis 4y ago
    There are many email providers who are quite profitable by charging just that and are not afraid of Gmail's absolute dominance.
    - thekyle 4y ago
      If you use one of those smaller paid email providers you can still interact with people who use Gmail. If you tried to create a small Instagram competitor it's unlikely that Facebook would ever agree to federate with you.
      - rglullis 4y ago
        No, but you can federate with the millions of people already using other alternatives based on ActivityPub. People are really underestimating the second order effects from the Twitter exodus. It's not just Twitter that has a competitor. It's just a matter of time until all the Fediverse gets enough of a critical mass and then all walled gardens will lose its appeal.
    - isametry 4y ago
      Well, and do those providers have 1.5 billion users like Gmail does? I'm not really sure whether you made this analogy to disagree or to prove their point.
      - rglullis 4y ago
        Neither. The analogy was to say that their point was irrelevant. The fact that there is a network with 1.5B users does not prevent of a smaller, pay-to-join, network.
        BbzzbB 4y ago
        It obviously doesn't, plenty of space for niche players. But it does prevent them from becoming the next 2B people social network which will default to becoming to go-to social media to connect with just about anyone you meet in the world. A $1/month app won't replace Instagram (the article is about IG dying).
        rglullis 4y ago
        My sibling comment addressed this point: my bet [0] is that the next big social media network is not going to be a monopolistic walled garden, but it will be instead made by a constellation of federated providers. My belief is not that Instagram is going to be replaced by one niche app where people pay $1/month, but it will die and be replaced by thousands of smaller players who can interoperate: - Newspapers, TV networks and streaming services who will offer a "free" account to their Mastodon (or similar) server for paying subscribers. - "Influencers" who will be hosting their own ActivityPub servers - Companies who will realize that they can put all their marketing communications under their own control and branding. - Fringe communities who will be running their servers just because they can. - Commercial providers who will look for something that can differentiate themselves (privacy, custom clients with special features) and charge for it. - etc, etc, etc. [0]: By bet, I mean that literally. This has been one of my side-projects and I've put already a non-negligible amount of time and money into it. Thanks to Musk, my service has seen more activity, signups and inquiries about custom hosting in the past 3 weeks than it has seen in the first 3 years.
- MattDemers 4y ago
  You end up having a cyclical problem, though: No one uses it because no one posts > No one posts because they don't expect interaction > No one expects interaction because no one uses it And then brands or influencers don't join because there's no potential to make money. Part of the history of these big incumbents is that people were discovering a more user-friendly way to use the web through them; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube all were "Hey, we can now do something we could do before, much easier, in a more accessible way that I can show to my normie friends/my parents." Alternatives that DO come up, like 500px or Vimeo, end up needing to become more for enthusiasts (people who care about fidelity, rather than novelty), turning away normies in the process. That's fine for them, as long as their goal isn't to "be an alternative YouTube/Flickr."
- rglullis 4y ago
  https://pixelfed.org https://pixelfed.org. Tell me you are willing to pay $1/month, and I will stop postponing it and finally add it to https://communick.com https://communick.com
- defulmere 4y ago
  Pixelfed is the droid you're looking for. You can find a server to join at https://pixelfed.org https://pixelfed.org and then support the project via Patreon for $1/month (or more).
nowherebeen 4y ago
Social products all have a lifetime value and it’s incredibly short. The same thing will also happen to TikTok one day. I suspect we will learn in the coming decades that social media companies are very profitable in the short term, but not so in the long term, say 20 years, unless the keep introducing new viral social products.
- yogthos 4y ago
  This is a problem for commercial social media companies. Companies need to make profit to operate, and once they stop being able to show growth then investments start to dry up. There is also no clear revenue model aside from ads and mining of user data. The situation is quite different in open source world. The only factors that matter for an open source platform are having enough people who are willing to develop it, run servers, and post content. Once the platform reaches enough users to be sustainable then it can exist indefinitely without need for growth or any significant funding. We can look at Mastodon as a case study. It builds on top of all the work done by GNU Social and the OStatus protocol. GNU Social languished in obscurity for many years, but Mastodon was able to build on this work and create a much larger social network. Now, there's a whole federation of different platforms using ActivityPub protocol that grew out of OStatus. Fediverse will likely outlive every single commercial social media platform in existence today.
- dopeboy 4y ago
  I think this is a lazy conclusion and needs more depth. What’s huge - seismic really - is that people actually prefer to know more about strangers than friends. On average, these strangers tend to be personalities and as a result are more entertaining / interesting / provocative than my typical friend. Combine this with the average person posting less about their life and you end up with a serious problem. Twitter first rode this trend, but TikTok really exploited it specifically with the medium of video and their algorithm to serve content. Networks effects were once seen as the ultimate moat and one reason why FB could never be taken down. But it turns out if the content people “trade” on their “marketplace” is poor, all the network effects in the world won’t save you.
  - 4y ago
yamrzou 4y ago
https://archive.ph/Ujltn https://archive.ph/Ujltn
x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago
I don't know if IG is dead, but that Reels nonsense was an absolute fiasco. They kept showing me reels that were nonsensical and were only designed to lead engagement stats from questions of "what is the person trying to do here". Not to mention, the comments on many of these useless vids were always in Turkish. I don't speak Turkish, I've never been to Turkey, yet comments on videos were always in Turkish.
- epolanski 4y ago
  I know plenty of friends who can spend hours on reels everyday, my SO is an example, but most of my female friends are the same. I understand that modern IG may not be the greatest, but engagement wise their choices, at least for the 25+ tier, have paid off imho.
  - Kiro 4y ago
    Yeah, I can attest to that. I've went from barely using Instagram to spending a lot of time on it.
- viburnum 4y ago
  I get the baffling Turkish videos too. It’s a shame, instagram used to show me landscape architecture photos that I was genuinely interested in. And it doesn’t matter how much I flag it as not interesting, the random videos never stop.
- Kiro 4y ago
  I don't think it's a fiasco. I think Reels are better than TikTok.
- kylehotchkiss 4y ago
  I get a lot of Turkish construction videos, and even more strangely, a lot of Turkish bus driver videos. No idea how I ended up in that cohort ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- whywhywhywhy 4y ago
  I clicked on some sort of Turkish meat sandwich video once and now get at least a handful of videos showing the same sandwich being made a week.
pelasaco 4y ago
I hope not. I use it as a way to save my moments with my family, in the expectation that It will survive some good years, and therefore my kids can then watch the pics, videos, comments and get a better picture (pun intended) of the context of the photos. Much better than have it in a disk (if its survive) or printed.
- ncr100 4y ago
  This situation is increasingly a concern for me too, and I think replication and shared data ownership is the solution. Like everyone you care about having a copy of your data, and the copy always being up to date, perhaps encrypted so only those family you want to consume the content have access to those pictures too via user control. Anyhow it's sad that Facebook has so much of my family's lives hostage... Only there can I see what's up. I wish I could see a 'family' feed.
  - rglullis 4y ago
    If you don't care at all about popular figures and just want to share content with people you actually know, https://movim.eu https://movim.eu would be a much better alternative.
  - pelasaco 4y ago
    Yes, well i just have it private, i just have the real close friends and family.. thats my message in a bottle to the future.. I hope it reaches the shore, someday.
  - pelasaco 4y ago
    > Anyhow it's sad that Facebook has so much of my family's lives hostage... Only there can I see what's up. I'm not the social media kind of people, but I have some friends and family members, that my last words were through facebook. So as a communication tool, I see its value. Said that, I don't have the app installed anywhere. Just messages notifications via email.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
DanCarvajal 4y ago
It's because these apps are longer social in the original sense of social media. Most of my family's sharing of what would have been Instagram or Facebook posts are now in a WhatsApp group I admin. Sure I would have loved to get everyone onto Signal instead but the end result has been much better experience for us.
- MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
  Group chats are wonderful for two very basic, core reasons: chronological and no ads.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  And for larger groups Discord is not horrible alternative. Just need to give up on tracking everything, but it is very good platform to share and momentarily discuss interesting things.
yellow_lead 4y ago
When Facebook bought it, they prioritized growth over the product itself. This kills the product.
dmje 4y ago
Eldest son (17) and all his mates use it - very rarely do they post publicly, it's purely for messaging. I've never been sure why, there's plenty enough alternatives, but that's how it is for him and his cohort.
- dmix 4y ago
  It’s used heavily in dating these days. We use instagram as a messenger because that’s what everyone has and it’s socially easier to ask a new person for the instagram rather than their phone number. Its predictable and not entirely private like a close friend group chat on iMessage or WhatsApp. Plus of course the way it integrates with feeds of photo/videos you’re already looking at casually. The same way FB used to be.
  - isametry 4y ago
    If data plans weren't tied to them, Gen Z probably wouldn't have phone numbers at all anymore. (Well, at least in those parts of the world where a data reception no slower than 3G is ubiquitous.) If you think about it, the whole concept really does stick out nowadays. The idea of this unique, static (or at least not easily changeable), non-descript identifier tied only to you and your physical device is very much a product of its time. Phone numbers only continue to exist by momentum – if a similar thing were to be implemented today, it would never catch on so universally.
- dugmartin 4y ago
  I’m pretty sure your son and his mates all have finstas and post a lot - you are just not seeing it (source: having two teenage daughters)
  - arlcode 4y ago
    Not OP, but going by pesonal experience way back in days of original facebook days a lot of people never posted that much and mainly consumed as soon as it was possible. Even before that on forums etc. there were many more lurkers than posters. 17 year old me didn't wanted to be compared to all the others "perfect" lives. Maybe I'm naive but I bet that hasn't fundamentally changed.
throwaway82388 4y ago
I’m far from bullish on meta long-term, but reporting like this would have you believe that nobody uses Facebook, and that Instagram is soon to share its fate. Optimists that they are, tech reporters overweight growth to absurd extremes. Maybe reporting on youth trends brings out the insecurities in all of us—you’d rather not look clueless in front of your two cool friends in their early 20s than the 2 billion or so Facebook MAUs. TikTok is a platform with huge growth potential. IG is perceptibly declining. But Facebook has proven itself fairly durable, mostly to people outside tech and media bubbles. It’d be wise to not call it over just yet.
- AJ007 4y ago
  Does it? Back in 2021 TikTok was averaging more hours of viewing per month than Youtube (in the US.)
- nightski 4y ago
  It takes a second to open an app, become a MAU, and then close it in disinterest. I'll admit this is my relationship with Facebook. I never see anything on there I am remotely interested in. Just old relatives spewing nonsense. But I guess I count as one of those 2 billion MAUs. I wonder how many are in the same spot.
  - throwaway82388 4y ago
    I’d bet a solid majority, like it is on any social platform. Most users don’t post or engage. Biggest predictor for Facebook and IG use among my sample of friends is whether they’re married and have families, or in many cases, pets. In my sample, many own homes or property. Not where the growth is, but not worthless from a revenue standpoint.
    - HWR_14 4y ago
      > Biggest predictor for Facebook and IG use among my sample of friends is whether they’re married and have families, or in many cases, pets. Which way does the correlation go?
barnabee 4y ago
Instagram as a social network sucks but I like sharing my photos with people who are already my friends (private account), and seeing their photos too.
- rpxio 4y ago
  my close friends and family have moved to the app Locket for sharing photos. much more direct and less "social" features (likes, follows, reels) that i don't care about.
- rndgermandude 4y ago
  In my German circles, that spot has been covered by whatsapp for a long while now. It never has been instagram or anything else really. For me it went from studivz (long defunct German "facebook" for university students, didn't last long), via facebook (for a short while, and due to lack of alternatives) straight to whatsapp, and has stayed there ever since, with the exception of some photography interested people sharing larger sets of photos on flickr at times, and some dating/sexting happening on snap (but most of that still was/is on whatsapp). Instagram was always understood as a place where you go if you want to see celebs, influencers and the "wannabes". Granted, I am a bit older, a millennial (as much as it hurts me to admit) and an older one at that, but I regularly take the tram in my city at times when all the teenagers are going to school or coming from school, and you can see a damn lot of whatsapp on all those phone screens, a lot of tiktok, and a good amount of discord.
prpl 4y ago
Instagram was over when all the “kids” were on Snapchat, except it wasn’t. Maybe it is, but it will be a death by 500 million cuts, not a max exodus. There is no clear successor.
- coldtea 4y ago
  >There is no clear successor. Successor to what? As if it serves some purpose? This is like wondering what will "successfully replace" a tumor that's to be removed... (And, yes, you can have millions of users without service a purpose, at least not any useful one. All kinds of crap has).
warkanlock 4y ago
This is one of the biggest jibes I have ever read, given that Meta's MAU is the highest of all time (2.9b, if I remember correctly) Instagram it's not over, and I bet will win the battle against TikTok
- jibe 4y ago
  Jibe?
  - chihuahua 4y ago
    Jibe (verb): change course by swinging a fore-and-aft sail across a following wind. (noun): an act or instance of jibing. GP believes that the Atlantic article constitutes an instance of changing course by swinging a sail across a following wind, presumably metaphorically.
    - bink 4y ago
      Check their username.
    - jibe 4y ago
      99% sure they meant "gibe", but thought I'd just ask to see if there was some new use of jibe that would make sense that I didn't know about. gibe - (noun) an insulting or mocking remark; a taunt. "a gibe at his old rivals"
- pixl97 4y ago
  MAU doesn't mean much if they are losing users in primary markets and new users are from places where the ads don't pay.
raldi 4y ago
Instagram used to be about seeing what my friends were up to; now it’s all my friends resharing made-for-IG takes and re-re-re-re-re-sharing group photos I’ve already seen seven times. I want an “OC Only” toggle. Edit: And the above was referring only to Stories. I haven’t looked at the feed regularly in over a year.
itake 4y ago
Walking through the mall yesterday, I was shocked to see 5+ adults watch FB Reels / IG / TikTok. I think FB might be right about video being the future.
mkl95 4y ago
Instagram is "transitional" technology. It peaked at a time when traditional social networks had started their slow decline, and things like Snapchat and TikTok were gaining some popularity. These days it's a bit too open for traditional users, and a bit too boring for the average TikTok user. It will always fill a niche, but it will inevitably shrink by at least an order of magnitude.
viburnum 4y ago
“In other words, Instagram is giving us the ick: that feeling when a romantic partner or crush does something small but noticeable—like wearing a fedora—that immediately turns you off forever” This was so ridiculously judgmental that I couldn’t keep reading.
- 0_____0 4y ago
  If it makes you feel any better, it's not the hat's fault.
- micromacrofoot 4y ago
  found the fedora-wearer
- isametry 4y ago
  There are currently two comments in this thread reacting defensively to that fedora mention – which is two more than I would've preferred there to be.
  - viburnum 4y ago
    It’s not the fedora, it’s the utter shallowness of it
bsnnkv 4y ago
My anecdata is that all IG is really used for anymore is messaging due to inertia and cross-posting content from other platforms. Very little original user generated content. Fundamentally, these old apps that are built on the "create an account and manually follow users" model cannot compete with TikTok right now, and I don't think they'll be able to change to be competitive with TikTok in the future.
coolbreezetft22 4y ago
Maybe I'm ignorant of what TikTok is but it seems to be mostly about video sharing and less about "social networking" with friends and family?? I also think TikTok has serious risks going forward re Chinese government. Already a lot of grumbling from lawmakers in US about banning it as CCP growing more belligerent in recent years whereas Facebook products aren't at all influenced by it.
- chrischen 4y ago
  Tiktok is short addictive videos from randos. Youtube is long addictive videos. Instagram and facebook is still primarily focused on content from people you know, though they are also trying to copy some of TikTok’s randos content via the Reels feature. At the end of the day they just want to get attention by giving content, whether using friends or essentially crowdsourcing. I prefer Netflix, because I’m paying them and they are not just manipulating me to show ads.
  - slowmovintarget 4y ago
    This reminds me of a related article discussed earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32482523 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32482523 The Three Trends: 1. Medium: text -> images -> video -> 3D graphics -> VR 2. AI: time -> rank -> recommend -> generate 3. UI: click -> scroll -> tap -> swipe -> autoplay TikTok is at the video/recommend/swipe stage.
    - fxtentacle 4y ago
      Autoplaying VR porn generated on-demand to perfectly match each visitor's preferences. Yeah, that sounds like it would become popular very quickly.
  - api 4y ago
    The trend in social media for years has been away from social and toward just addictive content and finding the best way to crowdsource that content. The purpose is becoming simply to get you to spend as much time as possible staring at the phone to sell ads, and nothing more. I predict the next advancement will be pure AI generated content, just a continuous adversarial attack on the human brain programmed to maximize viewing time for each individual. This could be packaged as things like virtual friends (Replika) or games with constantly evolving game play punctuated with ads or even as something that looks like TikTok. Pure refined 200 proof addictive emptiness is the logical apex of “free” mass media. We will look back on TV and early generation social media as high culture compared to what’s coming.
haunter 4y ago
The Atlantic is more over than IG
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  And yet, here we are commenting on an Atlantic article and not an Instagram post.
- daveevad 4y ago
  FWIW (not much) - I've never used IG or read The Atlantic. There is simply far too much stuff on the Internet that's not memberwalled or paywalled.
- Barrin92 4y ago
  unlike most digital apps The Atlantic has been around for almost 170 years. Based on that fact alone I'd give it a good shot to outlive not one but the next five to ten successors of IG.
open-source-ux 4y ago
There are different segments on Instagram. Perhaps the "lifestyle blogger" or "influencer" has lost it's popularity. However, other audiences are still following different interests on Instagram. There are still thousands of artists (maybe millions) posting their art and illustrations, and still popular on Instagram.
onetimeusename 4y ago
I am surprised people expect these apps to remain popular for a long time. The internet has changed so much. I've watched social media apps come and go every few years and I personally think they are all short lived trends with maybe a few exceptions. They capture a young market first, who provide the value (photos, videos, memes) and then older generations start joining after the young market is captured. Then after five to 10 years, they age out, the fad is over. A new app captures the younger generation and the cycle repeats. Some smaller social media networks have maybe kinda sorta survived more than one generation to some extent but it's debatable. Twitter seems like it has the most staying power so far but the present situation is evolving rapidly.
- fullstackchris 4y ago
  I also have seen and beleive this is an accurate picture of how these things go. But I'd ask, what about pseudo- social network apps like airbnb? They have a minimal social aspect, but to me app like that will have a longer possible lifetime. I guess even in airbnb's case there are competitors encroaching and stealing market share...
- fasthands9 4y ago
  I mean I think the people who predicted they would remain popular for a long time were actually right? They may stop accelerating but they are still as popular as ever. YouTube is the second visited site in the US and FB is the third - and they've been at the top for over a decade. E-mail is not a social network but has stuck around for 20 years. I've used Reddit since 2010. I've been on Instagram for six years now and probably use it more now than I ever have. Even Snapchat which to me seemed like a fad - is massively popular among teens. I think it is true there are lots of smaller sites like Vine or Digg or YikYak which peter out but it seems like if you hit the critical mass then you can maintain popularity for decades.
  - bostik 4y ago
    YouTube likely has staying power despite of what the company are doing with the UI and user experience flows, because it sure as hell can't be because of it. And at least their search is not trying to actively work against the user. (Their recommendation engine is a dumpster fire, for sure.) A mostly usable, generally accessible, and fairly easily discoverable video hosting platform. I can think of a lot of worse product pitches.
jrm4 4y ago
In a very broad sense, I'm glad to see things like this happening; I think a (relatively) high rate of turnover in social media is probably orders of magnitude better and safer than "one app to rule them all, forever." It additionally makes me bullish on federated deals like Activitypub/Mastodon. It's funny that the above presently tend to be "lefty-crunchy-hippie" -- because, I think if corporations get it through their hiveminds that the above enables them to have their own "official source of truth," thus preventing doofiness like blue check marks, this would all take off in a beneficial way.
- winternett 4y ago
  They keep starting out with a free service then they focus on turning it into a paid service... In Instagram's case, just like with Twitter and even TikTok now, they charge users for visibility, or they trickle it out just enough to make users constantly and feverishly ask what they're doing wrong. It's mental manipulation that just doesn't work, and the paid advertising format leads platforms to their death, but just like users keep posting, investors are flocking to put money onto the next social media platform. I hope that independent web communities return, and that people start making their own web sites, tracking music and entertainment across multiple platforms and dealing with their content payola schemes and repetitive marketing is ruining everything fun and useful about the Internet.
TylerE 4y ago
Figures. It recently passed the mom test. My 70-something mom signing up for something is a strong signal it has peaked.
syllablehq 4y ago
I think the key to a massively successful new social network will be a fallback API of just email/text. Why not let your shiny new social network UI parse any dumb input into a fancy thread format? Zero adoption friction. Federation baked in. Example: You run a mastodon-like service that can receive email. When it gets an email, it publishes a twirt with the contents. Truncates as needed. If it's a new email address, spin up new user with email username. No password needed, cause it came from the email address you own. Conversely, in the fancy interface, you can @soandso@gmail.com and it will email them for you. Doesn't matter if they've "joined twartordon." So it has a dumb-simple user growth model baked in. I've been promoting this idea for years in the man-yells-at-clouds format, but folks don't seem to get why it's so powerful...
- cardamomo 4y ago
  SMS is how I used to use Twitter, back in 2008 or so. You could text 40404 with your tweet, and you could receive Tweets from that number too. It was great in that era before I had a smartphone, and it felt like something halfway between a group chat and microblogging. I miss that mode of interaction.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Have you ever ran a mail server? When you're blocking 99.93% of incoming messages as spam you'll learn to be more selective.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
impulser_ 4y ago
They moved on from Facebook being over to Instagram being over lol. Instagram isn't over. It's still the most popular social media app on both App Store and Google Play in the US. For the past couple of years you always see articles popping up about Facebook being dead, then you look at the actual data and people are using Facebook more than ever. Look at the last report from Meta, more people on a daily and monthly basis are using Facebook and Instagram than ever both. Nearly 3b people use their apps on the daily basis. It going to take on hell of a long time before they become over.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  > Look at the last report from Meta, more people on a daily and monthly basis are using Facebook and Instagram than ever both. It's more nuanced than that. If you're losing traction where it matters - in younger generations & high-value markets like the US that have higher future cash flows - it doesn't matter if you're making up for it with usage from old people or people in poor countries without good advertising infra. Facebook is definitely not looking rosy for the future. And Instagram seems like it's on a similar path to Facebook 4 or 5 years ago. It doesn't look bad, but it also doesn't look great...
  - throwayyy479087 4y ago
    I went on Instagram for the first time in a few years yesterday. None of my friends post anymore and it’s all ads or sponcon. Group chats have been slowly growing for the last decade, and now have become completely dominant. I wonder how much of it is fear of cancellation leading to defaulting to private communication.
    - toastal 4y ago
      I had my account banned this year after logging in for a long while and told I looked too much like a bot. The only way to try to get access again was to upload a 'video selfie' at multiple angles, but no way would I want to help that facial algorithm any more than necessary. Good riddance.
  - 4y ago
purec 4y ago
Author points to data showing 300m active users in 2013, 2b active users now, yet claims that Instagram is over. What is the replacement? Where is the decline?
- achenet 4y ago
  Author is in what some would call an NYC cool kid media bubble, and you know, those cool kids aren't using it anymore, which means no on who matters does (2billion active dorks notwithstanding)
racked 4y ago
Honestly I never understood the appeal. A social network that forces you to wedge your content in images and short videos, while on Facebook you could share YouTube videos, music, interesting links, write-ups, you name it. How can anyone in their right mind prefer something as limiting as Instagram? Even its instant messenger is limited compared to Facebook's.
- pwython 4y ago
  People said the same thing about Twitter with its original 140 character limit. Just easily-consumable content you can scroll through. I enjoy the artwork I find on there. If I want YouTube links, music videos, news articles, etc I'll hit up Reddit.
- mertd 4y ago
  Instagram's formats feel nicer for getting updates from friends and family. No rants, just happy photos against usually a nice background. Performative or commercial accounts make the experience worse though, and from what I understand these are being prioritized in the timeline.
- standardUser 4y ago
  The simplification is (was) part of the appeal. It felt clean and refreshing to mostly look at pretty photos with minimal text. And it was a much more positive space. Photos of vacations, food, clothes, pets, friends. No political fighting or conspiracy theories or bitching about an ex. The comment space, a usual cesspool of unmitigated negativity and cruelty, was conveniently tucked away. I miss the pre-pandemic Instagram. Now, it feels like it's transformed into a more general-purpose, Facebook-like social network. Which I guess should have been predictable!
ajsnigrutin 4y ago
When the percentage of ads (sponsored posts/stories) is higher than the content you want to see, it becomes a pain to actually use the app, and you slowly use it less and less until you stop using it alltogether.
cainxinth 4y ago
Instagram isn't over, but it is becoming passé, which is not a positive sign for an app built around making people look cool.
denton-scratch 4y ago
> something small but noticeable—like wearing a fedora—that immediately turns you off forever. There seems to be a thing that some people hate "fedoras". I think it's to do with the "Fedora guy" meme. The hat Jerry Messing appears in is not a fedora; it's a trilby. A trilby is a hat with a quite narrow brim, and stiffened; it's often woven and patterned. It can be made of just about anything (such as leather). You can't really mess with the brim; it's flipped up at the back and down at the front, and it stays that way. A fedora is a soft felt hat with a wide brim. The hats worn by both the cops and the robbers in 30's gangster movies are all fedoras. Felt hats are not woven; they're felted, and that means they have to be made of wool or fur (I guess a panama fedora is an exception, but then I think a panama fedora is just a panama hat that is the same shape as a real fedora). Where I come from, a trilby is associated with racecourse bookies and the criminal fraternity, as well as tacky seaside "kiss-me-quick" hats, made of something like cardboard. Fedoras, on the contrary, are stylish. They're also very functional. They shed rain like an umbrella, without dumping it down your neck. The only thing wrong with them is that they make a good aerofoil - you have to "hold onto your hats" if it's windy.
- phillipcarter 4y ago
  This comment is imperceptible from a parody of a hacker news comment.
  - denton-scratch 4y ago
    Indistinguishable?
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    I think it’s a copypasta but I can’t quite recall.
    - nerfhammer 4y ago
      no hits on google; it appears to be original
TheAceOfHearts 4y ago
On the topic of social media in decline, TikTok also appears to have peaked in content already. Following people isn't that interesting since most content creators that hit it big are One Hit Wonders. After they hit that big growth spike, they either follow the herd with the latest dance or trend, or they keep doing the same thing that made em famous with slight variations. How long can you milk the same dance routine by switching out which celebrity does the silly little dance? There were a few interesting educational channels for a while, but most people just don't have that many interesting things to keep posting about at the rate which is expected of a platform like TikTok. Quality content takes time to produce. TikTok really only has a few buckets of content types. Some examples include thirst traps from sex workers that are looking to promote their OnlyFans and cute animals doing cute things. Instagram isn't that different. I mostly use the app to see cute pictures of people's pets and the occasional human picture.
- throwaway82388 4y ago
  It is remarkable how hard it is for a business to simply last a decade. To do it at the scale of the incumbent apps is astounding to me. While TikTok is growing quickly, we still don’t know its long term potential, how ‘sticky’ it is. I’d predict it has a trajectory more like Twitter and less like Snapchat. But it could well become a YouTube. All we can do is wait and find out.
  - chadlavi 4y ago
    It's almost like these businesses don't actually provide any value (the users do, but the users aren't motivated to provide value, just motivated to drive engagement)
  - nickthegreek 4y ago
    TikTok has a creator fund that incentives and rewards their creators. It is much closer to YouTube than Twitter or Snapchat. And I’m pretty sure it’s DAUs are way greater than both of those as well.
    - 4y ago
indymike 4y ago
Instagram was really nice until a few years ago. I could keep up visually with family and friends, and didn't have all advertorial, news and political garbage get in the way. Still good for talking to people, but a lot of that is moving to messenger apps not from Meta.
Animats 4y ago
"To scroll through Instagram today is to parse a series of sponsored posts from brands, recommended Reels from people you don’t follow, and the occasional picture from a friend that’s finally surfaced after being posted several days ago. It’s not what it used to be." That seems to be how social media services die. Too many ads, fewer users, revenue drop, more ads to boost revenue, still fewer users, irrelevance. This is called "pulling a Myspace".
- amelius 4y ago
  And even the non-advertisement posts are still self-promotional posts.
  - elgar1212 4y ago
    this is even more infuriating than actual ads, because at least actual ads have the "sponsored" label and don't try to hide it
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  When the accountants make the decisions, the company must die.
  - coffeebeqn 4y ago
    Hey don’t blame the accountants. The root problem is that these services don’t actually have a business plan other than grow, sell ads. Instagram is 12 years old and their leadership hasn’t come up with anything that makes money.
- 63 4y ago
  This isn't my experience with Instagram at all. I only follow people I know personally, check in once or twice a day and see posts and stories from them and really nothing else. No sponsored posts, no reels, etc. Maybe some ads. I don't use the discover page and stop scrolling my feed once I get through all the new posts so maybe that's it.
yupis 4y ago
Instagram is the new Tumblr
svnpenn 4y ago
the login wall is what killed it for me. try this link in a private window: https://instagram.com/p/ClCFeRSjOXo https://instagram.com/p/ClCFeRSjOXo if you hit refresh 5 times, even slowly, you get blocked until you login. I shouldn't have to login just to view a post.
jrnichols 4y ago
I think it's more accurate to say The Atlantic is over before Instagram is. We've been using Instagram more than any of the other social networks. Not making a TikTok account. YouTube lost me forever with their invasive ad push. Facebook lost me with its over the top moderation and irrelevant & useless ads. My Twitter account was suspended for a SNL quote. Instagram currently has relevant and generally well done ads, if anything. The videos are also captivating and addictive and currently not littered with ads. I think that if they put ads in the Reels, they'd drive away a lot of traffic. Right now you almost don't notice some of the ads, and the ones you do notice are generally well done. That's a big difference right there, in my opinion. Instagram has a lot of fun educational content & accounts. TikTok seems to lack that - it's a pool of misinformation more than education in my experience. Definitely going to disagree with The Atlantic here.
- nickthegreek 4y ago
  Atlantic has been around for over 150 years. The kids are moving away from Instagram, so unless Instagram is going to wait out the next generation and hope the grandchildren are going to make accounts, they are going to run into issues.
elgar1212 4y ago
> Casey Lewis, a youth-culture consultant who writes the youth-culture newsletter After School, told me over email. “They don’t want to be on it, but they feel it’s weird if they’re not. A "youth-culture consultant" trying to predict the future? How scientific Since this whole article is just one big hot take, here's another hot take: eponymous social media as a whole is on the way out. The only stuff anyone can put on eponymous social media is personal brand stuff (think LinkedIn), never anything actually genuine It's impossible for people to have real engagements under eponymous social media because anything they can say could be turned against them IG is predominantly just marketing, whether it's people showing off (like LinkedIn), pages trying to build a following with e.g. pet videos so they can make money from ads, annoying influencer "content", or actual overt ads
risingsubmarine 4y ago
On more than a few occasions now I have loaded up my infrequently checked instagram accounts and been presented with something awful. They were always attention seeking reels from random accounts I don't follow; showing people being hurt or accident footage. I swipe up on the app and kill it pretty much straight away, then I consider deleting my instagram accounts once again.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Mikeb85 4y ago
Instagram, like many social networks, is what you make of it and who your friends are. Pick friends and who you follow well and it's a great experience. Pictures and video are equally supported, discovery is good, search is the best of any social network IMO. And pro-tip: if your discovery is too full of stuff you don't want, click stuff you don't want and click "not interested". It'll then remove similar posts from your discovery page in the future.
- system16 4y ago
  That's hardly the case anymore and it's one of the main points the article is making. It doesn't matter who you follow when well over half your feed is composed of ads, suggested reels, and two week old TikTok reposts from random strangers.
citizenpaul 4y ago
Instagram is doing just fine at the job it morphed into. A high end escort advertising board. A 20yo guy cannot afford to spend $5K a day for a beautiful girl that has posted scantly clad pics exactly for this purpose. They are not the market. The market is middle age wealthy men and the women they pay for their "time." Then the women they pay go back to Instagram to find things to buy for "bragging rights" which satisfies the advertisers.
seydor 4y ago
"cool people are bored of some media consumption format" What will be the next one? A: hand drawn postcards
crossroadsguy 4y ago
And there’s no use relevant/usable alternative on the horizon. Except a few utopian (or shall I say purist) ones. I guess one reason could be - even if someone wants to give it a shot they pretty much know that one of these behemoths will copy and drive them out, or buy them out but for that they need to have audience which is locked in vast corporate silos.
noveltyaccount 4y ago
"To scroll through Instagram today is to parse a series of sponsored posts from brands, recommended Reels from people you don’t follow, and the occasional picture from a friend that’s finally surfaced." I have two Instagram accounts: one that only follows friends and family. Another that follows brands, influencers, and such. It completely fixed my Instagram experience. I can choose the (low volume) social network of friends, or endless scrolling and discovery. Never do they intermix. The friends-only feed is so low traffic, I never get sucked into sponsored or suggested posts. Highly recommend.
lmedinas 4y ago
There are 3 reasons why Tiktok succeeded and Instagram struggles. 1) The focus of the Social Network is normal people, doing anything it might be interesting to others. Which is pretty much the contrary of Instagram which focus on Celebrities and "Friends". 2) Tiktok has an amazing fine-tuned Algorithm. Its like even a mirror of your subconscious, it tries very much to play anything you desire to see. 3) Instagram, Youtube and Twitter are full of ads. It just breaks the user experience. Youtube experience sucks too because they show Videos with higher probability of views which in turn are tipically big youtubers playing sponsored content.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
I never installed Instagram, but as I remember, it's an app to apply nice filters to photos you took with your phone. Do I confuse it with some other app or am I just getting old?
shaggie76 4y ago
As an avid photographer I thought Instagram would be a good place to share my work but was amazed to find just how photo-hostile it is: I loathe the forced 4:5 portrait aspect ratio and I die inside every time it ignores the embedded ICC profile and my colors get warped slightly after I post. I loathe reels and the recommended posts but their recent addition a mode for only viewing people you follow has more or less solved the other problems; I just wish they'd put a bit more of effort into the basic functionality.
andirk 4y ago
An increase in ads seems to be desparation. It's an easy throttle when a company needs cash but there's a tipping point. Protip: interact with a couple ads you like and you'll see mostly those instead of rando
Gigacore 4y ago
I stopped posting photos on Instagram. It takes a lot of effort to compose a good shot, process the RAWs and upload them. The interaction rate has gone down considerably. A decade ago, people genuinely commented on photos and provided feedbacks. Like counts has gone down as well. It feels discouraging to post photos with such less of a interaction and feedback. I don't care about the likes, but the platform that originally built to share photos no longer values them. Photos are replaced with stories, reels and ads. The influencers are pushing all sort of crap that gets boosted by the algorithm.
Gazoche 4y ago
Today I did an experiment. I opened up Facebook (the desktop version), scrolled down 40 times, and categorized every post I saw in my timeline. The result was roughly 30% ads, 30% "suggested" posts of random memes, 30% updates to pages I'm subscribed to by necessity (local clubs and such), and only 10% "real" content published by friends. An that last 10% was mostly people sharing or commenting on random pages I don't care about, not anything about their life. So Facebook, which is still marketed a social network and a way to stay in touch with friends, is now to me 90% irrelevant (or mostly irrelevant) garbage. I'm only using it as a mailing list for the few communities I'm still subscribed to, and despite having close to 200 "friends" I have not interacted with any of them through Facebook in years, save for the occasional birthday wish. Maybe I would if my timeline had some of their content, but either it's being pushed at the bottom of the algorithm or maybe like me they just don't bother posting anything at all anymore. It wasn't always like this. I'm old enough to remember Facebook's rise but young enough to have joined it when it was "hype", in my final years of high school. It looked nothing like today, your home feed was a constant buzzing of people sharing updates about their life and interacting organically. Yes, there were privacy concerns already, but it also tremendously helped me broaden my social circle and feel part of a community. It was very effective at the "social" part of "social network". But then came the engagement maximization algorithms, the ads, the brands, the sponsored content, the atrocious UI updates...and slowly but surely people started leaving, because it was becoming harder and harder to parse signal from noise. I'm sure there's a generational rift element too (teenagers pretty much ignored Facebook after their parents started to join), but even people who grew up with it are leaving because it's a fundamentally different platform than it was back in 2010. Seems like Instagram is taking a similar route. Makes you wonder if it's the fate of every social network to eventually decrepit and die.
ionwake 4y ago
So what does the new generation use these days if not instagram?
- panda888888 4y ago
  TikTok
nvarsj 4y ago
Next time you're on a bus, or other public area, peek at what people are doing on their phones. I'd bet it will be Facebook or Instagram like 99% of the time. Maybe WhatsApp outside of the US, and possibly Youtube. These are the apps people are on almost all the time. They have absolutely massive user bases and are integral parts of most adult humans' lives. The idea these apps are "dying" is out of touch with reality.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Instagram Is Over

193 points by dailo10 4y ago

jumpkick 4y ago

I wonder if there’s a market for small app, limited in scope, knock off of the original Instagram. $1/month.

pipeline_peak 4y ago
I’m sure there’s many but in the world of social media, content is key and users are what make that happen. I tried using Peer Tube recently, felt like I was on 2005 YouTube...absolute no man’s land
BbzzbB 4y ago
There are reasons why IG has 2B people, part of which is not charging $1/month.
- rglullis 4y ago
  There are many email providers who are quite profitable by charging just that and are not afraid of Gmail's absolute dominance.
  - thekyle 4y ago
    If you use one of those smaller paid email providers you can still interact with people who use Gmail. If you tried to create a small Instagram competitor it's unlikely that Facebook would ever agree to federate with you.
    - rglullis 4y ago
      No, but you can federate with the millions of people already using other alternatives based on ActivityPub. People are really underestimating the second order effects from the Twitter exodus. It's not just Twitter that has a competitor. It's just a matter of time until all the Fediverse gets enough of a critical mass and then all walled gardens will lose its appeal.
  - isametry 4y ago
    Well, and do those providers have 1.5 billion users like Gmail does? I'm not really sure whether you made this analogy to disagree or to prove their point.
    - rglullis 4y ago
      Neither. The analogy was to say that their point was irrelevant. The fact that there is a network with 1.5B users does not prevent of a smaller, pay-to-join, network.
      - BbzzbB 4y ago
        It obviously doesn't, plenty of space for niche players. But it does prevent them from becoming the next 2B people social network which will default to becoming to go-to social media to connect with just about anyone you meet in the world. A $1/month app won't replace Instagram (the article is about IG dying).
        rglullis 4y ago
        My sibling comment addressed this point: my bet [0] is that the next big social media network is not going to be a monopolistic walled garden, but it will be instead made by a constellation of federated providers. My belief is not that Instagram is going to be replaced by one niche app where people pay $1/month, but it will die and be replaced by thousands of smaller players who can interoperate: - Newspapers, TV networks and streaming services who will offer a "free" account to their Mastodon (or similar) server for paying subscribers. - "Influencers" who will be hosting their own ActivityPub servers - Companies who will realize that they can put all their marketing communications under their own control and branding. - Fringe communities who will be running their servers just because they can. - Commercial providers who will look for something that can differentiate themselves (privacy, custom clients with special features) and charge for it. - etc, etc, etc. [0]: By bet, I mean that literally. This has been one of my side-projects and I've put already a non-negligible amount of time and money into it. Thanks to Musk, my service has seen more activity, signups and inquiries about custom hosting in the past 3 weeks than it has seen in the first 3 years.
MattDemers 4y ago
You end up having a cyclical problem, though: No one uses it because no one posts > No one posts because they don't expect interaction > No one expects interaction because no one uses it And then brands or influencers don't join because there's no potential to make money. Part of the history of these big incumbents is that people were discovering a more user-friendly way to use the web through them; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube all were "Hey, we can now do something we could do before, much easier, in a more accessible way that I can show to my normie friends/my parents." Alternatives that DO come up, like 500px or Vimeo, end up needing to become more for enthusiasts (people who care about fidelity, rather than novelty), turning away normies in the process. That's fine for them, as long as their goal isn't to "be an alternative YouTube/Flickr."
rglullis 4y ago
https://pixelfed.org https://pixelfed.org. Tell me you are willing to pay $1/month, and I will stop postponing it and finally add it to https://communick.com https://communick.com
defulmere 4y ago
Pixelfed is the droid you're looking for. You can find a server to join at https://pixelfed.org https://pixelfed.org and then support the project via Patreon for $1/month (or more).

nowherebeen 4y ago

Social products all have a lifetime value and it’s incredibly short. The same thing will also happen to TikTok one day. I suspect we will learn in the coming decades that social media companies are very profitable in the short term, but not so in the long term, say 20 years, unless the keep introducing new viral social products.

yogthos 4y ago
This is a problem for commercial social media companies. Companies need to make profit to operate, and once they stop being able to show growth then investments start to dry up. There is also no clear revenue model aside from ads and mining of user data. The situation is quite different in open source world. The only factors that matter for an open source platform are having enough people who are willing to develop it, run servers, and post content. Once the platform reaches enough users to be sustainable then it can exist indefinitely without need for growth or any significant funding. We can look at Mastodon as a case study. It builds on top of all the work done by GNU Social and the OStatus protocol. GNU Social languished in obscurity for many years, but Mastodon was able to build on this work and create a much larger social network. Now, there's a whole federation of different platforms using ActivityPub protocol that grew out of OStatus. Fediverse will likely outlive every single commercial social media platform in existence today.
dopeboy 4y ago
I think this is a lazy conclusion and needs more depth. What’s huge - seismic really - is that people actually prefer to know more about strangers than friends. On average, these strangers tend to be personalities and as a result are more entertaining / interesting / provocative than my typical friend. Combine this with the average person posting less about their life and you end up with a serious problem. Twitter first rode this trend, but TikTok really exploited it specifically with the medium of video and their algorithm to serve content. Networks effects were once seen as the ultimate moat and one reason why FB could never be taken down. But it turns out if the content people “trade” on their “marketplace” is poor, all the network effects in the world won’t save you.
- 4y ago

yamrzou 4y ago

https://archive.ph/Ujltn https://archive.ph/Ujltn

x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago

I don't know if IG is dead, but that Reels nonsense was an absolute fiasco. They kept showing me reels that were nonsensical and were only designed to lead engagement stats from questions of "what is the person trying to do here". Not to mention, the comments on many of these useless vids were always in Turkish. I don't speak Turkish, I've never been to Turkey, yet comments on videos were always in Turkish.

epolanski 4y ago
I know plenty of friends who can spend hours on reels everyday, my SO is an example, but most of my female friends are the same. I understand that modern IG may not be the greatest, but engagement wise their choices, at least for the 25+ tier, have paid off imho.
- Kiro 4y ago
  Yeah, I can attest to that. I've went from barely using Instagram to spending a lot of time on it.
viburnum 4y ago
I get the baffling Turkish videos too. It’s a shame, instagram used to show me landscape architecture photos that I was genuinely interested in. And it doesn’t matter how much I flag it as not interesting, the random videos never stop.
Kiro 4y ago
I don't think it's a fiasco. I think Reels are better than TikTok.
kylehotchkiss 4y ago
I get a lot of Turkish construction videos, and even more strangely, a lot of Turkish bus driver videos. No idea how I ended up in that cohort ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
whywhywhywhy 4y ago
I clicked on some sort of Turkish meat sandwich video once and now get at least a handful of videos showing the same sandwich being made a week.

pelasaco 4y ago

I hope not. I use it as a way to save my moments with my family, in the expectation that It will survive some good years, and therefore my kids can then watch the pics, videos, comments and get a better picture (pun intended) of the context of the photos. Much better than have it in a disk (if its survive) or printed.

ncr100 4y ago
This situation is increasingly a concern for me too, and I think replication and shared data ownership is the solution. Like everyone you care about having a copy of your data, and the copy always being up to date, perhaps encrypted so only those family you want to consume the content have access to those pictures too via user control. Anyhow it's sad that Facebook has so much of my family's lives hostage... Only there can I see what's up. I wish I could see a 'family' feed.
- rglullis 4y ago
  If you don't care at all about popular figures and just want to share content with people you actually know, https://movim.eu https://movim.eu would be a much better alternative.
- pelasaco 4y ago
  Yes, well i just have it private, i just have the real close friends and family.. thats my message in a bottle to the future.. I hope it reaches the shore, someday.
- pelasaco 4y ago
  > Anyhow it's sad that Facebook has so much of my family's lives hostage... Only there can I see what's up. I'm not the social media kind of people, but I have some friends and family members, that my last words were through facebook. So as a communication tool, I see its value. Said that, I don't have the app installed anywhere. Just messages notifications via email.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

DanCarvajal 4y ago

It's because these apps are longer social in the original sense of social media. Most of my family's sharing of what would have been Instagram or Facebook posts are now in a WhatsApp group I admin. Sure I would have loved to get everyone onto Signal instead but the end result has been much better experience for us.

MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
Group chats are wonderful for two very basic, core reasons: chronological and no ads.
Ekaros 4y ago
And for larger groups Discord is not horrible alternative. Just need to give up on tracking everything, but it is very good platform to share and momentarily discuss interesting things.

yellow_lead 4y ago

When Facebook bought it, they prioritized growth over the product itself. This kills the product.

dmje 4y ago

Eldest son (17) and all his mates use it - very rarely do they post publicly, it's purely for messaging. I've never been sure why, there's plenty enough alternatives, but that's how it is for him and his cohort.

dmix 4y ago
It’s used heavily in dating these days. We use instagram as a messenger because that’s what everyone has and it’s socially easier to ask a new person for the instagram rather than their phone number. Its predictable and not entirely private like a close friend group chat on iMessage or WhatsApp. Plus of course the way it integrates with feeds of photo/videos you’re already looking at casually. The same way FB used to be.
- isametry 4y ago
  If data plans weren't tied to them, Gen Z probably wouldn't have phone numbers at all anymore. (Well, at least in those parts of the world where a data reception no slower than 3G is ubiquitous.) If you think about it, the whole concept really does stick out nowadays. The idea of this unique, static (or at least not easily changeable), non-descript identifier tied only to you and your physical device is very much a product of its time. Phone numbers only continue to exist by momentum – if a similar thing were to be implemented today, it would never catch on so universally.
dugmartin 4y ago
I’m pretty sure your son and his mates all have finstas and post a lot - you are just not seeing it (source: having two teenage daughters)
- arlcode 4y ago
  Not OP, but going by pesonal experience way back in days of original facebook days a lot of people never posted that much and mainly consumed as soon as it was possible. Even before that on forums etc. there were many more lurkers than posters. 17 year old me didn't wanted to be compared to all the others "perfect" lives. Maybe I'm naive but I bet that hasn't fundamentally changed.

throwaway82388 4y ago

I’m far from bullish on meta long-term, but reporting like this would have you believe that nobody uses Facebook, and that Instagram is soon to share its fate. Optimists that they are, tech reporters overweight growth to absurd extremes. Maybe reporting on youth trends brings out the insecurities in all of us—you’d rather not look clueless in front of your two cool friends in their early 20s than the 2 billion or so Facebook MAUs. TikTok is a platform with huge growth potential. IG is perceptibly declining. But Facebook has proven itself fairly durable, mostly to people outside tech and media bubbles. It’d be wise to not call it over just yet.

AJ007 4y ago
Does it? Back in 2021 TikTok was averaging more hours of viewing per month than Youtube (in the US.)
nightski 4y ago
It takes a second to open an app, become a MAU, and then close it in disinterest. I'll admit this is my relationship with Facebook. I never see anything on there I am remotely interested in. Just old relatives spewing nonsense. But I guess I count as one of those 2 billion MAUs. I wonder how many are in the same spot.
- throwaway82388 4y ago
  I’d bet a solid majority, like it is on any social platform. Most users don’t post or engage. Biggest predictor for Facebook and IG use among my sample of friends is whether they’re married and have families, or in many cases, pets. In my sample, many own homes or property. Not where the growth is, but not worthless from a revenue standpoint.
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    > Biggest predictor for Facebook and IG use among my sample of friends is whether they’re married and have families, or in many cases, pets. Which way does the correlation go?

barnabee 4y ago

Instagram as a social network sucks but I like sharing my photos with people who are already my friends (private account), and seeing their photos too.

rpxio 4y ago
my close friends and family have moved to the app Locket for sharing photos. much more direct and less "social" features (likes, follows, reels) that i don't care about.
rndgermandude 4y ago
In my German circles, that spot has been covered by whatsapp for a long while now. It never has been instagram or anything else really. For me it went from studivz (long defunct German "facebook" for university students, didn't last long), via facebook (for a short while, and due to lack of alternatives) straight to whatsapp, and has stayed there ever since, with the exception of some photography interested people sharing larger sets of photos on flickr at times, and some dating/sexting happening on snap (but most of that still was/is on whatsapp). Instagram was always understood as a place where you go if you want to see celebs, influencers and the "wannabes". Granted, I am a bit older, a millennial (as much as it hurts me to admit) and an older one at that, but I regularly take the tram in my city at times when all the teenagers are going to school or coming from school, and you can see a damn lot of whatsapp on all those phone screens, a lot of tiktok, and a good amount of discord.

prpl 4y ago

Instagram was over when all the “kids” were on Snapchat, except it wasn’t. Maybe it is, but it will be a death by 500 million cuts, not a max exodus. There is no clear successor.

coldtea 4y ago
>There is no clear successor. Successor to what? As if it serves some purpose? This is like wondering what will "successfully replace" a tumor that's to be removed... (And, yes, you can have millions of users without service a purpose, at least not any useful one. All kinds of crap has).

warkanlock 4y ago

This is one of the biggest jibes I have ever read, given that Meta's MAU is the highest of all time (2.9b, if I remember correctly) Instagram it's not over, and I bet will win the battle against TikTok

jibe 4y ago
Jibe?
- chihuahua 4y ago
  Jibe (verb): change course by swinging a fore-and-aft sail across a following wind. (noun): an act or instance of jibing. GP believes that the Atlantic article constitutes an instance of changing course by swinging a sail across a following wind, presumably metaphorically.
  - bink 4y ago
    Check their username.
  - jibe 4y ago
    99% sure they meant "gibe", but thought I'd just ask to see if there was some new use of jibe that would make sense that I didn't know about. gibe - (noun) an insulting or mocking remark; a taunt. "a gibe at his old rivals"
pixl97 4y ago
MAU doesn't mean much if they are losing users in primary markets and new users are from places where the ads don't pay.

raldi 4y ago

Instagram used to be about seeing what my friends were up to; now it’s all my friends resharing made-for-IG takes and re-re-re-re-re-sharing group photos I’ve already seen seven times. I want an “OC Only” toggle. Edit: And the above was referring only to Stories. I haven’t looked at the feed regularly in over a year.

itake 4y ago

Walking through the mall yesterday, I was shocked to see 5+ adults watch FB Reels / IG / TikTok. I think FB might be right about video being the future.

mkl95 4y ago

Instagram is "transitional" technology. It peaked at a time when traditional social networks had started their slow decline, and things like Snapchat and TikTok were gaining some popularity. These days it's a bit too open for traditional users, and a bit too boring for the average TikTok user. It will always fill a niche, but it will inevitably shrink by at least an order of magnitude.

viburnum 4y ago

“In other words, Instagram is giving us the ick: that feeling when a romantic partner or crush does something small but noticeable—like wearing a fedora—that immediately turns you off forever” This was so ridiculously judgmental that I couldn’t keep reading.

0_____0 4y ago
If it makes you feel any better, it's not the hat's fault.
micromacrofoot 4y ago
found the fedora-wearer
isametry 4y ago
There are currently two comments in this thread reacting defensively to that fedora mention – which is two more than I would've preferred there to be.
- viburnum 4y ago
  It’s not the fedora, it’s the utter shallowness of it

bsnnkv 4y ago

My anecdata is that all IG is really used for anymore is messaging due to inertia and cross-posting content from other platforms. Very little original user generated content. Fundamentally, these old apps that are built on the "create an account and manually follow users" model cannot compete with TikTok right now, and I don't think they'll be able to change to be competitive with TikTok in the future.

coolbreezetft22 4y ago

Maybe I'm ignorant of what TikTok is but it seems to be mostly about video sharing and less about "social networking" with friends and family?? I also think TikTok has serious risks going forward re Chinese government. Already a lot of grumbling from lawmakers in US about banning it as CCP growing more belligerent in recent years whereas Facebook products aren't at all influenced by it.

chrischen 4y ago
Tiktok is short addictive videos from randos. Youtube is long addictive videos. Instagram and facebook is still primarily focused on content from people you know, though they are also trying to copy some of TikTok’s randos content via the Reels feature. At the end of the day they just want to get attention by giving content, whether using friends or essentially crowdsourcing. I prefer Netflix, because I’m paying them and they are not just manipulating me to show ads.
- slowmovintarget 4y ago
  This reminds me of a related article discussed earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32482523 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32482523 The Three Trends: 1. Medium: text -> images -> video -> 3D graphics -> VR 2. AI: time -> rank -> recommend -> generate 3. UI: click -> scroll -> tap -> swipe -> autoplay TikTok is at the video/recommend/swipe stage.
  - fxtentacle 4y ago
    Autoplaying VR porn generated on-demand to perfectly match each visitor's preferences. Yeah, that sounds like it would become popular very quickly.
- api 4y ago
  The trend in social media for years has been away from social and toward just addictive content and finding the best way to crowdsource that content. The purpose is becoming simply to get you to spend as much time as possible staring at the phone to sell ads, and nothing more. I predict the next advancement will be pure AI generated content, just a continuous adversarial attack on the human brain programmed to maximize viewing time for each individual. This could be packaged as things like virtual friends (Replika) or games with constantly evolving game play punctuated with ads or even as something that looks like TikTok. Pure refined 200 proof addictive emptiness is the logical apex of “free” mass media. We will look back on TV and early generation social media as high culture compared to what’s coming.

haunter 4y ago

The Atlantic is more over than IG

Apocryphon 4y ago
And yet, here we are commenting on an Atlantic article and not an Instagram post.
daveevad 4y ago
FWIW (not much) - I've never used IG or read The Atlantic. There is simply far too much stuff on the Internet that's not memberwalled or paywalled.
Barrin92 4y ago
unlike most digital apps The Atlantic has been around for almost 170 years. Based on that fact alone I'd give it a good shot to outlive not one but the next five to ten successors of IG.

open-source-ux 4y ago

There are different segments on Instagram. Perhaps the "lifestyle blogger" or "influencer" has lost it's popularity. However, other audiences are still following different interests on Instagram. There are still thousands of artists (maybe millions) posting their art and illustrations, and still popular on Instagram.

onetimeusename 4y ago

I am surprised people expect these apps to remain popular for a long time. The internet has changed so much. I've watched social media apps come and go every few years and I personally think they are all short lived trends with maybe a few exceptions. They capture a young market first, who provide the value (photos, videos, memes) and then older generations start joining after the young market is captured. Then after five to 10 years, they age out, the fad is over. A new app captures the younger generation and the cycle repeats. Some smaller social media networks have maybe kinda sorta survived more than one generation to some extent but it's debatable. Twitter seems like it has the most staying power so far but the present situation is evolving rapidly.

fullstackchris 4y ago
I also have seen and beleive this is an accurate picture of how these things go. But I'd ask, what about pseudo- social network apps like airbnb? They have a minimal social aspect, but to me app like that will have a longer possible lifetime. I guess even in airbnb's case there are competitors encroaching and stealing market share...
fasthands9 4y ago
I mean I think the people who predicted they would remain popular for a long time were actually right? They may stop accelerating but they are still as popular as ever. YouTube is the second visited site in the US and FB is the third - and they've been at the top for over a decade. E-mail is not a social network but has stuck around for 20 years. I've used Reddit since 2010. I've been on Instagram for six years now and probably use it more now than I ever have. Even Snapchat which to me seemed like a fad - is massively popular among teens. I think it is true there are lots of smaller sites like Vine or Digg or YikYak which peter out but it seems like if you hit the critical mass then you can maintain popularity for decades.
- bostik 4y ago
  YouTube likely has staying power despite of what the company are doing with the UI and user experience flows, because it sure as hell can't be because of it. And at least their search is not trying to actively work against the user. (Their recommendation engine is a dumpster fire, for sure.) A mostly usable, generally accessible, and fairly easily discoverable video hosting platform. I can think of a lot of worse product pitches.

jrm4 4y ago

In a very broad sense, I'm glad to see things like this happening; I think a (relatively) high rate of turnover in social media is probably orders of magnitude better and safer than "one app to rule them all, forever." It additionally makes me bullish on federated deals like Activitypub/Mastodon. It's funny that the above presently tend to be "lefty-crunchy-hippie" -- because, I think if corporations get it through their hiveminds that the above enables them to have their own "official source of truth," thus preventing doofiness like blue check marks, this would all take off in a beneficial way.

winternett 4y ago
They keep starting out with a free service then they focus on turning it into a paid service... In Instagram's case, just like with Twitter and even TikTok now, they charge users for visibility, or they trickle it out just enough to make users constantly and feverishly ask what they're doing wrong. It's mental manipulation that just doesn't work, and the paid advertising format leads platforms to their death, but just like users keep posting, investors are flocking to put money onto the next social media platform. I hope that independent web communities return, and that people start making their own web sites, tracking music and entertainment across multiple platforms and dealing with their content payola schemes and repetitive marketing is ruining everything fun and useful about the Internet.

TylerE 4y ago

Figures. It recently passed the mom test. My 70-something mom signing up for something is a strong signal it has peaked.

syllablehq 4y ago

I think the key to a massively successful new social network will be a fallback API of just email/text. Why not let your shiny new social network UI parse any dumb input into a fancy thread format? Zero adoption friction. Federation baked in. Example: You run a mastodon-like service that can receive email. When it gets an email, it publishes a twirt with the contents. Truncates as needed. If it's a new email address, spin up new user with email username. No password needed, cause it came from the email address you own. Conversely, in the fancy interface, you can @soandso@gmail.com and it will email them for you. Doesn't matter if they've "joined twartordon." So it has a dumb-simple user growth model baked in. I've been promoting this idea for years in the man-yells-at-clouds format, but folks don't seem to get why it's so powerful...

cardamomo 4y ago
SMS is how I used to use Twitter, back in 2008 or so. You could text 40404 with your tweet, and you could receive Tweets from that number too. It was great in that era before I had a smartphone, and it felt like something halfway between a group chat and microblogging. I miss that mode of interaction.
pixl97 4y ago
Have you ever ran a mail server? When you're blocking 99.93% of incoming messages as spam you'll learn to be more selective.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

impulser_ 4y ago

They moved on from Facebook being over to Instagram being over lol. Instagram isn't over. It's still the most popular social media app on both App Store and Google Play in the US. For the past couple of years you always see articles popping up about Facebook being dead, then you look at the actual data and people are using Facebook more than ever. Look at the last report from Meta, more people on a daily and monthly basis are using Facebook and Instagram than ever both. Nearly 3b people use their apps on the daily basis. It going to take on hell of a long time before they become over.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
> Look at the last report from Meta, more people on a daily and monthly basis are using Facebook and Instagram than ever both. It's more nuanced than that. If you're losing traction where it matters - in younger generations & high-value markets like the US that have higher future cash flows - it doesn't matter if you're making up for it with usage from old people or people in poor countries without good advertising infra. Facebook is definitely not looking rosy for the future. And Instagram seems like it's on a similar path to Facebook 4 or 5 years ago. It doesn't look bad, but it also doesn't look great...
- throwayyy479087 4y ago
  I went on Instagram for the first time in a few years yesterday. None of my friends post anymore and it’s all ads or sponcon. Group chats have been slowly growing for the last decade, and now have become completely dominant. I wonder how much of it is fear of cancellation leading to defaulting to private communication.
  - toastal 4y ago
    I had my account banned this year after logging in for a long while and told I looked too much like a bot. The only way to try to get access again was to upload a 'video selfie' at multiple angles, but no way would I want to help that facial algorithm any more than necessary. Good riddance.
- 4y ago

purec 4y ago

Author points to data showing 300m active users in 2013, 2b active users now, yet claims that Instagram is over. What is the replacement? Where is the decline?

achenet 4y ago
Author is in what some would call an NYC cool kid media bubble, and you know, those cool kids aren't using it anymore, which means no on who matters does (2billion active dorks notwithstanding)

racked 4y ago

Honestly I never understood the appeal. A social network that forces you to wedge your content in images and short videos, while on Facebook you could share YouTube videos, music, interesting links, write-ups, you name it. How can anyone in their right mind prefer something as limiting as Instagram? Even its instant messenger is limited compared to Facebook's.

pwython 4y ago
People said the same thing about Twitter with its original 140 character limit. Just easily-consumable content you can scroll through. I enjoy the artwork I find on there. If I want YouTube links, music videos, news articles, etc I'll hit up Reddit.
mertd 4y ago
Instagram's formats feel nicer for getting updates from friends and family. No rants, just happy photos against usually a nice background. Performative or commercial accounts make the experience worse though, and from what I understand these are being prioritized in the timeline.
standardUser 4y ago
The simplification is (was) part of the appeal. It felt clean and refreshing to mostly look at pretty photos with minimal text. And it was a much more positive space. Photos of vacations, food, clothes, pets, friends. No political fighting or conspiracy theories or bitching about an ex. The comment space, a usual cesspool of unmitigated negativity and cruelty, was conveniently tucked away. I miss the pre-pandemic Instagram. Now, it feels like it's transformed into a more general-purpose, Facebook-like social network. Which I guess should have been predictable!

ajsnigrutin 4y ago

When the percentage of ads (sponsored posts/stories) is higher than the content you want to see, it becomes a pain to actually use the app, and you slowly use it less and less until you stop using it alltogether.

cainxinth 4y ago

Instagram isn't over, but it is becoming passé, which is not a positive sign for an app built around making people look cool.

denton-scratch 4y ago

> something small but noticeable—like wearing a fedora—that immediately turns you off forever. There seems to be a thing that some people hate "fedoras". I think it's to do with the "Fedora guy" meme. The hat Jerry Messing appears in is not a fedora; it's a trilby. A trilby is a hat with a quite narrow brim, and stiffened; it's often woven and patterned. It can be made of just about anything (such as leather). You can't really mess with the brim; it's flipped up at the back and down at the front, and it stays that way. A fedora is a soft felt hat with a wide brim. The hats worn by both the cops and the robbers in 30's gangster movies are all fedoras. Felt hats are not woven; they're felted, and that means they have to be made of wool or fur (I guess a panama fedora is an exception, but then I think a panama fedora is just a panama hat that is the same shape as a real fedora). Where I come from, a trilby is associated with racecourse bookies and the criminal fraternity, as well as tacky seaside "kiss-me-quick" hats, made of something like cardboard. Fedoras, on the contrary, are stylish. They're also very functional. They shed rain like an umbrella, without dumping it down your neck. The only thing wrong with them is that they make a good aerofoil - you have to "hold onto your hats" if it's windy.

phillipcarter 4y ago
This comment is imperceptible from a parody of a hacker news comment.
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  Indistinguishable?
- the_only_law 4y ago
  I think it’s a copypasta but I can’t quite recall.
  - nerfhammer 4y ago
    no hits on google; it appears to be original

TheAceOfHearts 4y ago

On the topic of social media in decline, TikTok also appears to have peaked in content already. Following people isn't that interesting since most content creators that hit it big are One Hit Wonders. After they hit that big growth spike, they either follow the herd with the latest dance or trend, or they keep doing the same thing that made em famous with slight variations. How long can you milk the same dance routine by switching out which celebrity does the silly little dance? There were a few interesting educational channels for a while, but most people just don't have that many interesting things to keep posting about at the rate which is expected of a platform like TikTok. Quality content takes time to produce. TikTok really only has a few buckets of content types. Some examples include thirst traps from sex workers that are looking to promote their OnlyFans and cute animals doing cute things. Instagram isn't that different. I mostly use the app to see cute pictures of people's pets and the occasional human picture.

throwaway82388 4y ago
It is remarkable how hard it is for a business to simply last a decade. To do it at the scale of the incumbent apps is astounding to me. While TikTok is growing quickly, we still don’t know its long term potential, how ‘sticky’ it is. I’d predict it has a trajectory more like Twitter and less like Snapchat. But it could well become a YouTube. All we can do is wait and find out.
- chadlavi 4y ago
  It's almost like these businesses don't actually provide any value (the users do, but the users aren't motivated to provide value, just motivated to drive engagement)
- nickthegreek 4y ago
  TikTok has a creator fund that incentives and rewards their creators. It is much closer to YouTube than Twitter or Snapchat. And I’m pretty sure it’s DAUs are way greater than both of those as well.
  - 4y ago

indymike 4y ago

Instagram was really nice until a few years ago. I could keep up visually with family and friends, and didn't have all advertorial, news and political garbage get in the way. Still good for talking to people, but a lot of that is moving to messenger apps not from Meta.

Animats 4y ago

"To scroll through Instagram today is to parse a series of sponsored posts from brands, recommended Reels from people you don’t follow, and the occasional picture from a friend that’s finally surfaced after being posted several days ago. It’s not what it used to be." That seems to be how social media services die. Too many ads, fewer users, revenue drop, more ads to boost revenue, still fewer users, irrelevance. This is called "pulling a Myspace".

amelius 4y ago
And even the non-advertisement posts are still self-promotional posts.
- elgar1212 4y ago
  this is even more infuriating than actual ads, because at least actual ads have the "sponsored" label and don't try to hide it
fnordpiglet 4y ago
When the accountants make the decisions, the company must die.
- coffeebeqn 4y ago
  Hey don’t blame the accountants. The root problem is that these services don’t actually have a business plan other than grow, sell ads. Instagram is 12 years old and their leadership hasn’t come up with anything that makes money.
63 4y ago
This isn't my experience with Instagram at all. I only follow people I know personally, check in once or twice a day and see posts and stories from them and really nothing else. No sponsored posts, no reels, etc. Maybe some ads. I don't use the discover page and stop scrolling my feed once I get through all the new posts so maybe that's it.

yupis 4y ago

Instagram is the new Tumblr

svnpenn 4y ago

the login wall is what killed it for me. try this link in a private window: https://instagram.com/p/ClCFeRSjOXo https://instagram.com/p/ClCFeRSjOXo if you hit refresh 5 times, even slowly, you get blocked until you login. I shouldn't have to login just to view a post.

jrnichols 4y ago

I think it's more accurate to say The Atlantic is over before Instagram is. We've been using Instagram more than any of the other social networks. Not making a TikTok account. YouTube lost me forever with their invasive ad push. Facebook lost me with its over the top moderation and irrelevant & useless ads. My Twitter account was suspended for a SNL quote. Instagram currently has relevant and generally well done ads, if anything. The videos are also captivating and addictive and currently not littered with ads. I think that if they put ads in the Reels, they'd drive away a lot of traffic. Right now you almost don't notice some of the ads, and the ones you do notice are generally well done. That's a big difference right there, in my opinion. Instagram has a lot of fun educational content & accounts. TikTok seems to lack that - it's a pool of misinformation more than education in my experience. Definitely going to disagree with The Atlantic here.

nickthegreek 4y ago
Atlantic has been around for over 150 years. The kids are moving away from Instagram, so unless Instagram is going to wait out the next generation and hope the grandchildren are going to make accounts, they are going to run into issues.

elgar1212 4y ago

> Casey Lewis, a youth-culture consultant who writes the youth-culture newsletter After School, told me over email. “They don’t want to be on it, but they feel it’s weird if they’re not. A "youth-culture consultant" trying to predict the future? How scientific Since this whole article is just one big hot take, here's another hot take: eponymous social media as a whole is on the way out. The only stuff anyone can put on eponymous social media is personal brand stuff (think LinkedIn), never anything actually genuine It's impossible for people to have real engagements under eponymous social media because anything they can say could be turned against them IG is predominantly just marketing, whether it's people showing off (like LinkedIn), pages trying to build a following with e.g. pet videos so they can make money from ads, annoying influencer "content", or actual overt ads

risingsubmarine 4y ago

On more than a few occasions now I have loaded up my infrequently checked instagram accounts and been presented with something awful. They were always attention seeking reels from random accounts I don't follow; showing people being hurt or accident footage. I swipe up on the app and kill it pretty much straight away, then I consider deleting my instagram accounts once again.

deleted 4y ago

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Mikeb85 4y ago

Instagram, like many social networks, is what you make of it and who your friends are. Pick friends and who you follow well and it's a great experience. Pictures and video are equally supported, discovery is good, search is the best of any social network IMO. And pro-tip: if your discovery is too full of stuff you don't want, click stuff you don't want and click "not interested". It'll then remove similar posts from your discovery page in the future.

system16 4y ago
That's hardly the case anymore and it's one of the main points the article is making. It doesn't matter who you follow when well over half your feed is composed of ads, suggested reels, and two week old TikTok reposts from random strangers.

citizenpaul 4y ago

Instagram is doing just fine at the job it morphed into. A high end escort advertising board. A 20yo guy cannot afford to spend $5K a day for a beautiful girl that has posted scantly clad pics exactly for this purpose. They are not the market. The market is middle age wealthy men and the women they pay for their "time." Then the women they pay go back to Instagram to find things to buy for "bragging rights" which satisfies the advertisers.

seydor 4y ago

"cool people are bored of some media consumption format" What will be the next one? A: hand drawn postcards

crossroadsguy 4y ago

And there’s no use relevant/usable alternative on the horizon. Except a few utopian (or shall I say purist) ones. I guess one reason could be - even if someone wants to give it a shot they pretty much know that one of these behemoths will copy and drive them out, or buy them out but for that they need to have audience which is locked in vast corporate silos.

noveltyaccount 4y ago

"To scroll through Instagram today is to parse a series of sponsored posts from brands, recommended Reels from people you don’t follow, and the occasional picture from a friend that’s finally surfaced." I have two Instagram accounts: one that only follows friends and family. Another that follows brands, influencers, and such. It completely fixed my Instagram experience. I can choose the (low volume) social network of friends, or endless scrolling and discovery. Never do they intermix. The friends-only feed is so low traffic, I never get sucked into sponsored or suggested posts. Highly recommend.

lmedinas 4y ago

There are 3 reasons why Tiktok succeeded and Instagram struggles. 1) The focus of the Social Network is normal people, doing anything it might be interesting to others. Which is pretty much the contrary of Instagram which focus on Celebrities and "Friends". 2) Tiktok has an amazing fine-tuned Algorithm. Its like even a mirror of your subconscious, it tries very much to play anything you desire to see. 3) Instagram, Youtube and Twitter are full of ads. It just breaks the user experience. Youtube experience sucks too because they show Videos with higher probability of views which in turn are tipically big youtubers playing sponsored content.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago

I never installed Instagram, but as I remember, it's an app to apply nice filters to photos you took with your phone. Do I confuse it with some other app or am I just getting old?

shaggie76 4y ago

As an avid photographer I thought Instagram would be a good place to share my work but was amazed to find just how photo-hostile it is: I loathe the forced 4:5 portrait aspect ratio and I die inside every time it ignores the embedded ICC profile and my colors get warped slightly after I post. I loathe reels and the recommended posts but their recent addition a mode for only viewing people you follow has more or less solved the other problems; I just wish they'd put a bit more of effort into the basic functionality.

andirk 4y ago

An increase in ads seems to be desparation. It's an easy throttle when a company needs cash but there's a tipping point. Protip: interact with a couple ads you like and you'll see mostly those instead of rando

Gigacore 4y ago

I stopped posting photos on Instagram. It takes a lot of effort to compose a good shot, process the RAWs and upload them. The interaction rate has gone down considerably. A decade ago, people genuinely commented on photos and provided feedbacks. Like counts has gone down as well. It feels discouraging to post photos with such less of a interaction and feedback. I don't care about the likes, but the platform that originally built to share photos no longer values them. Photos are replaced with stories, reels and ads. The influencers are pushing all sort of crap that gets boosted by the algorithm.

Gazoche 4y ago

Today I did an experiment. I opened up Facebook (the desktop version), scrolled down 40 times, and categorized every post I saw in my timeline. The result was roughly 30% ads, 30% "suggested" posts of random memes, 30% updates to pages I'm subscribed to by necessity (local clubs and such), and only 10% "real" content published by friends. An that last 10% was mostly people sharing or commenting on random pages I don't care about, not anything about their life. So Facebook, which is still marketed a social network and a way to stay in touch with friends, is now to me 90% irrelevant (or mostly irrelevant) garbage. I'm only using it as a mailing list for the few communities I'm still subscribed to, and despite having close to 200 "friends" I have not interacted with any of them through Facebook in years, save for the occasional birthday wish. Maybe I would if my timeline had some of their content, but either it's being pushed at the bottom of the algorithm or maybe like me they just don't bother posting anything at all anymore. It wasn't always like this. I'm old enough to remember Facebook's rise but young enough to have joined it when it was "hype", in my final years of high school. It looked nothing like today, your home feed was a constant buzzing of people sharing updates about their life and interacting organically. Yes, there were privacy concerns already, but it also tremendously helped me broaden my social circle and feel part of a community. It was very effective at the "social" part of "social network". But then came the engagement maximization algorithms, the ads, the brands, the sponsored content, the atrocious UI updates...and slowly but surely people started leaving, because it was becoming harder and harder to parse signal from noise. I'm sure there's a generational rift element too (teenagers pretty much ignored Facebook after their parents started to join), but even people who grew up with it are leaving because it's a fundamentally different platform than it was back in 2010. Seems like Instagram is taking a similar route. Makes you wonder if it's the fate of every social network to eventually decrepit and die.

ionwake 4y ago

So what does the new generation use these days if not instagram?

panda888888 4y ago
TikTok

nvarsj 4y ago

Next time you're on a bus, or other public area, peek at what people are doing on their phones. I'd bet it will be Facebook or Instagram like 99% of the time. Maybe WhatsApp outside of the US, and possibly Youtube. These are the apps people are on almost all the time. They have absolutely massive user bases and are integral parts of most adult humans' lives. The idea these apps are "dying" is out of touch with reality.

deleted 4y ago

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