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Introducing Instagram Stories

blog.instagram.com

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Re: Introducing Instagram Stories

#81

Post by tedmiston »

spike021 wrote: post #55
Yhippa wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've stopped using Insta for the most part. I'm an old and I feel like Snaps are just more fun for me. The major issue with that is a lot of my friends haven't caught on yet. Insta just feels like it has too many buttons and notifications from spammers flying at me. They lost the plot from the simple app they used to be a long time ago. Plus the new algorithm change is terrible for me. Every time I open the app I see…

Snapchats are surprisingly better than alternatives nowadays. I personally really dislike the new feeds by popularity route that services are adopting, and Snapchat's Stories are great because I can find a friend's feed for the day and just catch up immediately, rather than having to either dig and dig until a feed thinks a particular post is important, etc.

I also find it much easier to ignore the uninteresting people, or rather, people that tend to post 5+ times per day than it is on Facebook.

Re: Introducing Instagram Stories

#82

Post by tedmiston »

overcast wrote: post #46
instakill wrote: post #25

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 develop…

Considering Instagram was founded on ruining pictures with crappy filters, I doubt HD photos are anywhere on their radar.

That's very nearly the opposite of why Instagram was founded: good mobile photography was hard.

From transcript:

> How many people have heard of Burbn/use it? .... Long story short, we worked on that for a little while and then realized it wasn't really going anywhere. But the thing people loved the most about it was actually sharing images of what they were doing.

> So what we did was we listed out these five problems. And I remember the top three that we circled. Number 1 was that mobile photos don't look so great. We've all had that experience... you're seeing the sunset, you take a snapshot, and it looks washed out, you can barely see the sun, etcetera. And we were like, 'That's the major problem we want to solve.' Number 2 was that uploads on mobile phones take a really long time. So we were like, 'What could we do around that?' Well, maybe if we started the upload way before you're done even editing the photo's caption, and what if we sized down the photo just to fit perfectly on the screen but nothing else? And that's the small little problem and solution that it turns out really delights people because they press 'done' entering their caption, it's already been uploaded.

From Stanford to Startup [Entire Talk] http://ecorner.stanford.edu/videos/2735/From-Stanford-to-Sta...

Re: Introducing Instagram Stories

#83

Post by tedmiston »

overcast wrote: post #57
pconner wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of "real" photographers use Instagram now (and have for several years).

For marketing, which has been positive for a lot of artists. It's definitely allowed people to get their works out there, but let's not act like it's for serious photography.

Tons of Instagram users use it for "serious" photography. Perhaps you don't follow them, but many do, myself included.

https://www.instagram.com/1st/

https://www.instagram.com/dariusaskari/

https://www.instagram.com/msalisbu/

https://www.instagram.com/tiny_teaa/

I would even argue that Instagram has in some ways redefined professional photography (by enforcing different constraints than a professional photographer is used to).

Aggregator accounts are one of the best ways to discover high quality users.

https://www.instagram.com/nycgo/

https://www.instagram.com/cincybaton/

Re: Introducing Instagram Stories

#84

Post by tedmiston »

overcast wrote: post #72
elithrar wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but let's not act like it's for serious photography. I (strongly) disagree. There is some incredible work on Instagram from (many) thousands of 'amateur' and professional photographers alike. "Serious photography" isn't just restricted to DSLRs/MF/etc. In many ways, the constraints of mobile photography (lower res, fixed focal length, small viewport when consuming) has benefits, just like constraints elsewhere in p…

They are using Instagram as an easy publishing platform. It's assured the big ones find it very lucrative. The biggest issue with Instagram is all of the bullshit accounts with millions of users, that are just posting the work of other artists with a "credit" if they are lucky.

Aggregator accounts have positive effects on the community too, especially when it comes to discovery. They're not all bad.

Re: Introducing Instagram Stories

#85

Post by tedmiston »

abalone wrote: post #64

Serious question: what is it like being on an engineering team like this? Where the explicit objective is to clone a competitor head-to-toe. Does it impact morale? Can you recruit great people to such teams? (Note, I get that nothing is completely original out there, and that there are a few differences between this and Snapchat.)

I have met some members of Instagram's engineering team at Python conferences. They also run a dedicated engineering blog (https://engineering.instagram.com).

Despite the fact that they use an old version of Django, and the product has not exactly changed drastically since it became popular, they don't seem jaded.

Sometimes it's fun to build your own version of something regardless of what exists in the rest of the world. I'm sure nuances will become more prominent in time.

Re: Introducing Instagram Stories

#86

Post by tedmiston »

treigerm wrote: post #27

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…

Can't speak for everyone but my followers on Instagram are quite different from my Facebook friends. Over half of them I don't know personally. Besides the fact that my account is public, I think this impacts what I would post on there vs Snapchat significantly.

Re: Introducing Instagram Stories

#87

Post by spike021 »

tedmiston wrote: post #81
spike021 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snapchats are surprisingly better than alternatives nowadays. I personally really dislike the new feeds by popularity route that services are adopting, and Snapchat's Stories are great because I can find a friend's feed for the day and just catch up immediately, rather than having to either dig and dig until a feed thinks a particular post is important, etc.

I also find it much easier to ignore the uninteresting people, or rather, people that tend to post 5+ times per day than it is on Facebook.

Yeah. Just because a plethora of people like someone's post doesn't mean that I will, but with many new feeds that kind of post would be prioritized over something with fewer likes/comments that I would actually want to see.

Re: Introducing Instagram Stories

#88

Post by tedmiston »

overcast wrote: post #14
Grazester wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What! Didnt that video of the cool kids having fun inspire you to share your awesome life stories? I do get where you are coming from. I dislike snapchat because while it may be a way to share something silly its not a serious way to communicate. I have a friend that tries to use it for this and drives me nuts.

Add it to my list of things I don't "get". Photos are something I intend to keep, that's why I'm taking a picture.

Photos in Snapchat are more a way to convey the moments that make up your life rather than capture something to keep.

Re: Introducing Instagram Stories

#89

Post by justindocanto »

tedmiston wrote: post #79
justindocanto wrote: post #70

What's funny about this thread is it's almost all people complaining about dev experience, APIs, etc and saying IG is dead... Meanwhile their customers are very happy and very active. Look at how many snaps you see on your snapchat right now and then go look at how many IG stories have already been posted in the first couple hours. I'd say that was a successful launch. Nit picking things, as a developer, i understand…

By customer, are you referring to (free) consumers or business that pay IG for advertising? Looking at the latest update of Instagram (v9.0 on iOS), the Stories feature does not seem to be accessible for my account to try it. The post makes it sound like no one has it yet: > Instagram Stories will be rolling out globally over the next few weeks on iOS and Android.

By customer, i meant users. By users, I mean the people who spend time on the app and are the reason there are advertisers and/or a business in the first place.

Regardless of what the post says to you, people have it and are already posting a LOT. Vogue already has anna wintour in multiple posts on their IG story. Brands already are posting. A lot of the vine/snapchat "stars" are already 20-30+ posts deep. I see fashion bloggers, tech writers, etc. A lot of people are already using it.

Re: Introducing Instagram Stories

#90

Post by justindocanto »

dtien wrote: post #77
justindocanto wrote: post #70

What's funny about this thread is it's almost all people complaining about dev experience, APIs, etc and saying IG is dead... Meanwhile their customers are very happy and very active. Look at how many snaps you see on your snapchat right now and then go look at how many IG stories have already been posted in the first couple hours. I'd say that was a successful launch. Nit picking things, as a developer, i understand…

I agree, seems to be a lot of anger/hate on the developer side of things, but it's a smart move on IG's side from a user and business strategy perspective. I was having a similar discussion with someone else on a duplicate of this post, so thought I'd share some of my thoughts here as well since they're especially relevant to your comment. The general point of the prior discussion was that IG was simply cloning SC, a…

Your comment deserve a longer response, but i have to leave the office shortly.

My short reply is... I agree that staying within the app is a win. The overall mood seems to be "yes, one less app i have to use now..."

I don't keep apps I dont need or use, and a lot of people feel the same way. I dont want YET ANOTHER social networking app. This app feels like snapchat and IG merged, except in reality, IG just stole a lot of Snapchats thunder/users.

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