This is slightly off topic, but the reason I never started using Instagram is related to the reason I quit Facebook: the continuous stream of ego-stroking, look-at-me status updates and photographs was just tedious. The narcissism in all these updates, check ins, and shares is unbelievable.
I can fully understand why Instagram was worth $1B. It enabled enhanced ego-stroking because it took tedious photographs and made them look like they were cool without any effort.
Frankly, this says more about the people you follow than the platforms themselves. If you aren't following ego-maniacs (and, admittedly, stay out of the "popular posts" type sections) then there should be no problem.
Don't blame the platform for enabling people to be who they really are.
Don't blame the platform for enabling people to be who they really are.
I think the issue here is that McLuhan was absolutely right when describing how the medium actually transforms and filters the messages that are sent through it. It's worth reading "Understanding Media" (or "The Medium is the Massage") because one of his key points is that the apparent content of the messages being sent across a medium is a distraction for what's really going on (the societal change brought about by the medium itself).
In the case of social networking the medium is broadcasting a message that it's normal to continuously stream updates, pictures etc. about your daily life as if the people following you cared about that. The fact that they do care about it is simply a sign that the medium is shaping society to the social network's particular medium.
Also, it's worth considering the difference between a one-to-one sharing of something (let's say a picture of your child shared with your mother) and the broadcasting of information to a chosen social group.
The former is a personal interaction which has many subtexts (proud parent showing off their child, wanting to connect with your own parent), whereas the broadcast does not have the same depth. It's just "look at me".
Let me start by saying that I have the same gut reaction that you do.
On the other hand, isn't this position essentially saying that because the things in your life are similar to others and not surprising, they aren't valuable and worthy of documentation?
What's wrong with "look at me?" Am I not worthy of being looked at by my friends because I haven't done something remarkable? Just because my kid isn't really all that different from every other kid, or thousands of other people were also at that concert (and my photos are mediocre at best). . .
And if I share something actually remarkable that I've done, it's just "bragging," right?
I don't log in to facebook very often. But when I do, what else should I expect to see but what's going on in their lives?
My instinct is the same as yours--to hold back and be private. To not share my life with others, because they might be bored. To not document my everyday triumphs and failures, because they're not really that different from anyone else's.
But I have a sneaking feeling we might be wrong about this one. Maybe our boring human lives are worth documenting and sharing.
I agree with you in some regards and I think this is a great point (not because I agree with you, of course ;) .)
However, I think jgrahamc and you are speaking to different things. There is documentation, much like our parents did when we went to the beach as a toddler and we took that picture with mom and the sandcastle, and then there is personal curation that lives in narcissism and strikes me as dishonest (or too honest, perhaps).
There is sharing triumphs and failures, and then there is bounding triumph and failure with one's personal accounts as to make the world about the documenter instead of about the documenter as part of, well, the world.
I'm not sure I have this idea completely worked out as this seems subjective and who can really judge another's motives with absolute certainty. All I know is there is a fine line and we would be careful to hold ourselves to a standard that encourages sharing life without making life about ourselves.
After all, you can't be open source (which we LOVE) when you're all closed-sourcey yourself.
Anyway, just a little food for thought that came into my head with your observations.
I take pictures of my kids, things we're doing, or interesting things that I see in my daily life. When OP says "narcissism", he's either following much different people than I do, or he doesn't know what narcissism means.
I suppose it depends on your perspective. When I see people posting endless streams of pictures of their kids, home improvement projects, vacations etc. it appears just as narcissistic to me as posting pictures of you at the club or next to your brand new BMW. Everybody has their preference on what to indulge in throughout life but the universal constant is 'look at me'.
Yes this is relevant. Family pictures used to be something you put in albums and maybe pull out a few times a year to look at as a family.
Publishing all your pictures, all the time is like carrying a projector with slides from random moments in your life to every party you ever go to and setting it up for everyone to see whether they asked you to or not.
It sounds like a crazy thing to all of us who are aware of how things used to be.. but maybe for the next generation this is going to be cultural norm. I don't want to be judgmental and I'm not a psychiatrist so I can't tell if that's positive or negative or even if it's a long-term or short-term phenomenon, but at least for right now, that seems to be how we're evolving.
Yep, I agree. What some consider normal sharing can be considered narcissism by others.
We're just so immersed with our own life, that we never stop and consider whether others would actually care if we shared something.
And a platform can enhance the narcissism. Take any humble person and throw him into Twitter, and he/she can't help but tell everyone about their great life, or how they suffer more than others.
Think about it this way: previous generations conspicuously consumed "brand X" for the same reason: to show off. Now we can "show off" without consuming. In my book, that's progress. I'm not sure it makes us happier, though.
I think your comment is fully on topic. We're talking about how Instagram grew to be worth $1B. Its appeal or lack thereof to you individually is part of the conversation.
>For non-believers: Instagram removed features to make sharing pics simple again.
Nope, I still don't get it.
I've never used Instagram, so bear with me: when I take a picture with my phone, I click on the share button, pick where I want to share (Facebook, Twitter, email, text) and I'm done. Pretty simple. What is Instagram removing from that process to make sharing more simple?
Now maybe I can explain why people are astonished with what Instagram was bought for: they built an apparently amazing product, but it wasn't something that couldn't have been built by Facebook (or any other number of companies) rapidly and cheaply. It was the user base. Essentially, Instagram sold your "attention" to Facebook for $1BB.
> What is Instagram removing from that process to make sharing more simple?
You mentioned three steps.
1) > I take a picture with my phone
2) > I click on the share button
3) > pick where I want to share (Facebook, Twitter, email, text)
With Instagram
1) take the picture
Done, filters are optional, and the sharing is built in. Also, reducing the size (to i think... 600*600 pixels or so) makes it incredibly fast to upload even in crappy edge/gprs networks.
So the posting to Facebook/Twitter/whatever is done automatically, one-click? I can see that being appealing and simplifying things some. But I'd hardly call the old process cumbersome.
The difference between one thing (the primary thing) and three things is massive. Especially if this involves dropping out of a social situation, even for a few seconds, to do it.
I've disliked Instagram even before it hit Andriod so I've never seen how the app works. When you take the picture, does it upload automatically or do you have to actively share it? Because if it uploads automatically, then I think that is not good (for me anyway). If the crap filters (and previously being iOS only) weren't already keeping me away from Instagram, that feature surely would. But if you have to hit some sort of "share" button then you now have 2 steps which is not greatly more simple than what I do already without it. Since most of the Instagram pics that cross my stream have something written with them, I assumed there was a step after "take the picture". shrug to each their own though.
The small photo size was a key optimisation. Like you say, it means super quick uploads. Which means that users share more photos than they otherwise would have done.
Didn't you read the article? Damn the worth! We're all unique snowflake rockstars and all our meals and coffee mugs are blessed by our specialness. Share all the pictures!! (insert crazy meme guy with a paintbrush) Join the photo revolution man.
It's a girl.
It's a brush.
It's from Hyperbole and a Half.[1]
It's the overly used image that bothers me most because that person needs the traffic and their image is pretty popular yet they never get accreditation for it.
Omg that is hilarious. Like a billion times more hilarious than a funny but mindless "it's hilarious because everyone is in on it" meme. Thanks for pointing me in that direction.
Ironically this is relevant to the discussion. Memes are kind of like Instagram (I imagine there are other similar phenomenons). They share the instant gratification of a trigger-like social connection between a huge mass of people, but lack all the fulfillment and self-discovery that REAL content can bring. But it's really not surprising that things like Instagram and memes thrive in the digial-social space. Most people will generally get a much higher response to a "MY CAT HAZ GLASSES!" fake polaroid, then to share something like "Hi all my friends, I read this insightful 5 page article on adulthood and I think you all might get something out of it too."
It sort of reflects a broader-scale problem with people just not having time (or not wanting to bother) with discussing things like sex, politics, art, religion, relationships... They'd rather just share some Ha-Has, small talk and get drunk. I think this is especially pronounced in North America and in large urban centers.
I guess it's a matter of intent: if I already know I'll want to share the pic I'm about to take I just fire up Instagram, otherwise I use the standard camera app.
On a related note: the Google+ Instant Upload feature does even 'better'. From the G+ website: "All photos and videos taken with your mobile device are uploaded to the From your phone album. These photos and videos are only visible to you unless you share them." That's even more frictionless sharing, but not in a way I like: it freaked me out when I inadvertently turned this on.
That actually sounds reasonable -- you can log-in, decide which photos you want to share and delete the rest. Unless you don't like it using bandwidth or don't like google itself having access to all your stuff.
No, you can in fact discard the picture you took. What OP is saying is that it's one button to share to as many different social networks (plus email) as you want. It sounds minor, but it really is much more convenient.
My guess (I don't use it either - I can't stand the stupid filters), is that if you fire up Instagram, instead of the regular camera app, you'd know that it's going to automatically share everything you take.
Ah, but then you have only shared a pic & you haven't turned it into a social object you can comment on & like & whatnot. My mistake, I should have put that more clearly in words in the original post. Also, AFAIK when Instagram came out there was no FB & TW share integrated into the standard iOS camera app.
You post million different things on your Facebook and Twitter timeline. You have links, random thoughts, quotations, discussing with other people etc. etc.
Add people inevitably complaining 'Dude, you're posting 5 pictures of your cat EVERY DAY!', and having separate, photo-only social network suddenly makes sense.
What I think many Instagram critics misunderstand, is that Instagram is not about the filters. Sure, they're added value for many people, but at some point they'll go out of fashion, and I'm sure the people at Instagram know that damn well.
The real value of Instagram is the social network behind it. Photos are the easiest way of sharing what you're doing. You don't need to write a word, you just hold out your phone, snap a picture and upload it. And from the other side it's exactly the same, you don't even need to read to know what your friends are doing, you just glance over the picture stream.
Obviously you can do exactly the same on Facebook and Twitter, but by focussing on just photos Instagram has cut away all the clutter. And if you want to share what you're doing (or should I say seeing?) with friends who are not on Instagram, you can still flick the sharing switch.
Instagram is not about making the photo production process easier. It's about making the photo consumption process easier, so that the photos you take get more attention from others (and you have more fun).
You could share your photos to Facebook or Twitter instead, but when users view their streams from those other sites, they're confronted with either a sea of text (Twitter) or a sea of mixed content in non-standard formats (Facebook). Catching up on your Facebook feed is impossible, so nobody does it. Twitter is a bit better because the posts are in a standard format, but still, reading tweets takes a bit of time.
Contrast this with Instagram. I'm following over 200 people and I can catch up on an entire day's worth of photos in about 5 minutes. Because it's faster to view an image than read a tweet, and because of the standard post format, Instagram is literally the fastest way possible for me to see what my friends and family have been up to.
I'm not a heavy Instagram user, but I like the author's assertion. Instagram is so popular because of what it isn't - it's not another photo manager. It's just a totally frictionless way to share photos.
I didn't put it in the blog post for fear of making it too long, but one example of where "no choice" is a better option is in the image format: Instagram eliminates the question of "Should I shoot this in portrait or in landscape?".
That's a "feature"? It's probably the most aggravating characteristic of Instagram for me, and it's the reason I don't take all my pics with the app...
Turns out that unlike FOSS software that runs on your device, apps which have a server-based component can only be offered as "Free as in Beer" & not "Free as in Freedom" services.
ISTM that Instragram appealed to FB simply because Google+ has a very convenient automatic upload of all pictures taken by the phone. You can then easily choose which circle or person(s) to share these pics with, or not share them at all and just know they're safely tucked in the cloud. AFAIK FB didn't have this feature. I'd say that at $1bln they overpaid, though.
I can fully understand why Instagram was worth $1B. It enabled enhanced ego-stroking because it took tedious photographs and made them look like they were cool without any effort.