Why Instagram is dying, and how to fix it.
Instagram used to be a social media app, but has now slowly devolved into a shopping and private chat room app.
What went wrong? It’s very simple. The elements and features that made it a social media app were removed, effectively destroying organic discovery and interaction.
1. The feature where you could see what friends liked was removed.
This feature had its pros and cons, but mostly they were pros. Sure, it had some elements that might seem creepy (seeing the exact posts your friends liked, which might not always be flattering). BUT, that’s what makes “social”, SOCIAL. If you put something embarrassing out in your lawn, or say something in public, PEOPLE SEE IT. This is what makes it social.
Instagram should’ve just offered a feature to disable the ability for people to see what you liked. By removing this feature, Instagram walled off accounts from each other that were connecting in the most organic way possible. In essence, they created a sterile, gated neighborhood. This was the single best way to discover new content from CREATORS and NOT generic aggregation pages.
Solution: bring back this feature to restore the connective fabric of the community.
2. Rewarding aggregation pages and NOT the actual content creators.
Some people may not know what a data aggregation page is, but I’ll explain briefly: Instagram is itself an aggregation app/website. It collects all the images of all its users into one place. This is its sole function.
For example, you have an account by a photographer who lives in Montana. This photographer takes her own images (spends the gas money and time to really put in effort to create original content), posts them on her Instagram page under her name “Kelly’s Montana Photos”. BUT, there are several “Montana Awesome Photo” pages that simply share her images on their page (and other photographers images), doing literally no work to create original content for Instagram. Montana Awesome Photos is not a content creator and should not have priority on Instagram. In fact, it should NEVER show up in the “Explore” page. Why should it? INSTAGRAM itself is the main data aggregation page.
Solution: restore the connective nature of the community by removing aggregation pages from the Explore page and replace them with the content creators’ pages. Create a verification system to label pages who create original content.
3. They removed Locations and Hashtags from Stories.
This is yet another brick in the wall, another gate in the gated community, effectively destroying the connective fabric of the community.
Once upon a time you could visit the “#cats” hashtag in a story, and see a ton of stories under that hashtag. Or, you could click the location tag in a story (like @Nashville, for example) and see a long train of stories based in Nashville. It was fun, you could see cool stuff and really connect in real-time. This was social, thus “social media app”. But this feature is gone now, further nudging Instagram towards being a shopping and private chat room.
Solution: Restore hashtags and location viewing functionality in Stories.
4. Reels.
Weren’t Stories Reels?
Why not just offer the option to have a Story post to your feed?
Redundant.
Solution: Delete Reels, add functionality to Stories with option to share to feed.
5. Clunky GUI updates (Graphic User Interface)
A “Redesign” is not slapping on a new GUI over the old GUI. The new Instagram requires MORE CLICKS to accomplish a task than it did before. This is not a “refresh”… this is going backwards in functionality and aesthetics.
Solution: Simplify the GUI experience.
Initiating these several steps will help restore the “social” in “social media app”. And let’s be honest, if someone is worried about what someone sees on social media, they shouldn’t be on social media.
Instagram used to be an amazing, vibrant app. Slowly, year by year, it has become a private, gated community. It’s in bed by 10pm and up at 5 mowing the lawn. The social is gone.
Zzzzzzzzz.
