Why the Kardashians Don’t Like the New Instagram

The last time Kylie Jenner complained about a social media platform in 2018 over a tweet, Snapchat (the bone of contention then) stock lost 1.3 billion dollars. At the time, Kylie was Snapchat’s most influential user.
On Monday, July 25, Kylie Jenner shared a screenshot from a user’s post on her story, reminiscing the golden days of the gram when it was just a photo sharing platform. Kim Kardashian posted the screenshot as well, which said, “Make Instagram Instagram again. Stop trying to be tiktok I just want to see cute photos of my friends. Sincerely, everyone.”
The Change.org petition has so far garnered nearly 1,00,000 signatures.

We get the gripe—everyone’s talking about how there are more Reels on their feed and less than usual engagement. And while TikTok is banned in India, Instagram seems to be following its competitor’s footsteps. Meta (Instagram’s parent company) has been quick to incentivize creators who are making Reels and rewarding them with cash bonuses.

 

In a bid to push for Reels, Instagram had announced a new feature which turns any video post shorter than 15 minutes into a Reel. The platform is also providing pre-built Reels templates that everyone can use, training the users for quicker adoption even if they don’t know their way around it, or are fresh-off-the-boat on the gram.

Another feature they have introduced is ‘Dual’ where users can record their take on what’s happening by simultaneously using the phone’s front and back camera to record a video from two perspective.

Other announcements this month included improving the Instagram Map search. How? Search the area you are looking for on the Map which will pull up results categorized by their industry or type like hotels, cafes, etc. Plus, since creators seem to be at the core of driving growth, Instagram announced new updates and an extension of Subscriptions which it had introduced in January this year. You can now opt to curate Subscriber Chats, Subscriber Reels, Subscriber Posts, and Subscriber home, which means, exclusive content for subscribers by content creators.

On Tuesday, July 26, Instagram CEO, Adam Mosseri took to Twitter to respond. He said in a video posted on the platform, “I’m hearing a lot of concerns right now about photos and how we’re shifting to video. Now, I want to be clear, we’re gonna continue to support photos. It’s part of our heritage… That said, I need to be honest: I do believe that more and more of Instagram is going to become video over time. We see this even if we do nothing… So we’re gonna have to lean into that shift.”

Trust Meta to be concerned enough to release a statement when the Kardashians step in!

Tell us what you love to hate about the gram. Or well… what you love to love about the app, even if you are still reeling from all the changes and updates it keeps introducing.