Introducing Instagram Stories

I had turned auto-update off ahead of the new instagram UI update because I prefered the look of the old Instagram. I'm now glad that I did. I don't need stories slowing down the experience, taking up more real estate, or eating more bandwidth.

I don't mean to be cynical, but I think Instagram as a product has peaked. Their core functionality was perfect, and in many ways, the product only gotten worse as they've rolled out updates (prioritized feeds, sending DMs by default when you @ people, ...). Instagram hasn't rolled something out in a long time that's made me "wow," which is too bad, because it was my favourite social network not that long ago.

I'd be very annoyed if I had any personal stake in the company.

What I'm unclear about, as both an Instagram user and with an interest in product development (from a UI/UX perspective), is what question this answered.

I suppose it should not be entirely a surprise for a half billion user, Facebook-owned service to take the throw-feature-at-the-wall-and-see-if-it-sticks approach.

Regardless, it appears to be unobtrusive (though it seems odd to bury ephemeral content creation/consumption...)

Instagram, instead of focusing on making important improvements to its own app and platform, decide to clone Snapchat. Color me surprised.

Things that are shit with IG and still require attention:

- there is no real onboarding experience [1]

- good luck contacting a human that works at Instagram with a support query as a user [2]

- good luck contacting a human that works at Instagram with a support query as a developer [2]

- developer libraries are abandoned [3]

- the API is a joke.

- There is still a lack of support for HD photography.

- The 3rd party developer experience is ... well ask some of your peers and you'll quickly find out.

[1] Someone at Instagram, for the love of the internet just do some reading up on this. Here's an article to get you started: https://medium.com/@scottbelsky/crafting-the-first-mile-of-p...

[2] unless you stalk them on Twitter. That's not creepy at all though, is it?

[3] https://github.com/facebookarchive/instagram-ruby-gem

I would really like to know why Facebook thought that this would be a better feature for Instagram than for Messenger or WhatsApp. That's how I use my social media apps:

- WhatsApp: Messaging with most of my friends (I'm from Germany and here everyone I know uses WhatsApp) - Messenger: Messaging with people that don't have WhatsApp - Snapchat: Letting my friends now what I'm up to right now. I don't put much thought into what I post there. I mostly follow close friends because I honestly don't really care about the stories of people I don't know. - Instagram: Posting pictures that I think look nice. Often that are pictures that I took with my DSLR and edited on my laptop. I also follow a lot of people I don't know but who I think take nice pictures.

Therefore I don't see me using Instagram Stories anytime soon because

1. Snapchat already has that feature and they probably implemented it better, 2. the content on Instagram is simply different than the one on Snapchat (more high-quality instead of the quick and dirty Snaps).

If I wouldn't have Snapchat and they brought Stories to one of their Messaging apps I might have used it. But Instagram? No chance. It would be interesting to know how other people use these apps (if at all). I realise that I'm probably younger than most people here so my experience might differ quite bit.

Can you elaborate a bit on your developer experience?

I've started building an app for Instagram and would like to know. Apart from the newly introduced sandbox and app approval requirements I haven't noticed any major pain points yet.

It's true that most libraries are only seldom updated, but on the other hand the API doesn't change much and it's REST with OAuth after all.