The Ghost of Instagram Past
Every time Instagram pushes out a new feature to “enhance” user experience, whether as a part of a software update or a general addition, a part of me stops and examines its utility — does this really make the app better and improve user experience, or is it just another flashy feature that does nothing but seem mildly impressive? Thus, as is tradition, when Instagram rolled out its ask.fm-inspired question-answer feature to the Stories function last month, I stopped my mindless skipping of possibly uninteresting stories and concentrated to examine it completely. It was this examination that made me realise that Instagram, having evolved from simply the photo-sharing platform it once was, has also lost a part of its soul in the transformation.
The Ghost of Instagram Past would be disappointed — the early days of interpersonal competition in the chronological representation of ideal lives are long gone. An app that began as a personal social media platform has become a gross misrepresentation of itself as it seeks to mould itself for the purposed of influencers, brands, and advertisers.
This gradual downfall is easy to trace but hard to digest, because while your feed isn’t chronological anymore, you still see traces of people you know personally posting pictures like the good old days, and while the stories line-up is sprinkled with the more-than-occasional #ad or #spon, you still see video clips that otherwise would have been hosted on Snapchat. Ultimately though, the cardinal problem is simple and harsh — regular users aren’t Instagram’s target audience anymore.
This shift in Instagram’s ideology has been slowly spreading its claws over the updates that the app receives — its user interface, which was once the pinnacle of design for social media interaction, has now deteriorated into a mechanism for the maximum consumption of money-making content. The entire app has slowly transformed itself into the ultimate influencer tool, from officially declarable sponsored posts to business profiles, and IGTV and now to the Q&A function. At no point in the last month have I seen the Q&A feature on a friend’s story and not skipped their entire profile from my queue, but I have paused at it being featured on an influencer’s story and read through the subsequent replies posted.
This subconscious action is indicative of the primary goal of this feature — it humanises the person behind the profile. Coincidentally (although not entirely), this feature is of most use to the people who need their audience to trust and believe in what they say — influencers who need to humanise themselves to relate better to their target demographic, who in turn will then subscribe to whatever that influencer sells them, ideologies included.
This is not the Instagram I remember, neither is it the one I want for my future, but it is one that, much like all else in the digital media world, has adapted to the changing tides of how advertising and marketing work. In a world now driven by how many people one person can influence and bend to their will through subtle sponsorships and promoted posts, Instagram is only doing what it must to survive. The natural habitat of web influencers is one that is hostile to an app that is not willing to change with the times — that is what lead to the downfall of Yik Yak with its anonymity and consequently no scope for verification or influence. Had Instagram and its (malevolent) overlord Facebook made the decision to stick with the old ideology, Instagram would have found itself fading into obscurity in favour of Snapchat — who didn’t hop onto the influencer bandwagon fast and efficiently enough, destroying its appeal in the process of poorly modifying its user experience to maybe fit in.
So where do we go from here? Well, keeping in mind Instagram’s track record, I wouldn’t be surprised if they pushed out more features that allowed digital marketing to flourish even more — at the end of the day, Instagram is a business that’s trying to stay afloat. In a digital economy as vast as that of media influencers and people with wide, demographic-specific audiences, it is admittedly difficult to maintain a balance that pleases everybody and keeps the business running at a profit. That’s the cardinal reason why despite everything, Instagram is still growing; it’s monopolised the market so much that what Instagram does is rivalled by no other and it’s now in a league of its own. But a business such as this is nothing without its consumers, so their main challenge will be to ensure that no competitor rises up to snatch the audience advertisers and influencers thrive off of — because while many people want to keep up with pop culture, most people would gladly move to a platform that provided fewer targeted ads and listened to UI-related complaints.
Nonetheless, should the Ghost of Instagram Past ever appear before the Ghost of Instagram Present, somehow I don’t think both of them would get along famously — their policies would be different, and I have a strong feeling the modern gradient won’t sit well with the Polaroid-esque image of the former.
