Introducing Instagram Stories
blog.instagram.com
blog.instagram.com
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?
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.
That's pretty quick actually, didn't expect that they'd be so fast.
Edit: I'd be pretty interested if other developers could share their experience with the approval process too.
Yes, Instagram legally owns your data, but now they are actively preventing you from accessing it as well.
"I want to display hashtag content and public content on my website."
"This use case is not supported. We do not approve the public_content
permission for one-off projects such as displaying hashtag based
content on your website. As alternative solution, you can show your own
Instagram content, or find a company that offers this type of service
(content discover, moderation, and display)."This is the kind of thing that causes people to circumvent their API management layer...
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 photography.
(I follow many photographers who primarily or solely publish to Instagram; many who aren't marketing their paid services.)
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.
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...
Their reporting flow has so many taps and steps that it feels like it's designed to be inefficient to give them less requests.
Another is support for panoramas is nonexistent. They've abandoned the square format already, but there's still currently a minimum w:h ratio.
Interesting though that they're only implementing the most basic features (drawing over a video?), and not the more interesting and fun face tracking stuff that Snapchat does now.
Personally, I can't see this being successful. Snapchat will remain to be a quick and dirty way to get 'moments' to my friends (like twitter, but with video), whereas Instagram will be for more more 'serious', 'arty' photos.
Instagram Memories is just plain old Snapchat - story with expiration date.
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 the same pictures over and over again and lots of advertisements in there now.
I don't know what cohorts Facebook is looking at. Are they seeing a drop in engagement but balance it doesn't matter because of the revenue stream from advertisers? Or may be the bulk of users have increased engagement with a non-chronological feed? Perhaps more users than I realized follow over 1,000 users and the chronology value was lost a very long time ago.
Oddly enough I'm finding myself returning back to RSS feeds. Lots of excellent independent bloggers still out there who actually write useful things. edit: and photographers.
I hypothesized about other benefits and drawbacks here [1]
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.
Can't you just go directly to that friend's timeline?
Right now there are feeds I've seen where I don't even see today's updates at all because their algorithms deem previous days' posts more important.
I don't know that a third-party can assign a value of importance when it can be so arbitrary.
What people say they want and what their behavior shows that they want aren't necessarily the same thing. Watch what users do, not what they say.
"It seems every single social network is trending towards feature parity with each other (...) Some (important) differences remain, but from an observer time-travelling forward from 2012, the social networks of today would appear nearly interchangeable."
And [2]:
"I can't help but feel that value is paradoxically lost (for the user) once everyone iterates themselves into equivalence. Network effect advantages become almost irrelevant when everyone maintains an equally split presence. And if value is lost for the user, their platform loyalty will plummet.
Facebook and Snapchat will begin to be perceived as a 'utility' (something that has already happened to Twitter), meaning, we as a society all expect these functions of social networking and messaging to be fulfilled by a provider, but the exact provider is no longer relevant. Pressures to maintain a positive balance sheet will lead to a proliferation of ads."
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12083820 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12083903
Huh? The overlap is probably one of the largest of any social networks. Simply take a look at the sheer volume of Instagram's that are obviously touched up Snaps.
- they already launched it, not taking weeks like some other industry bozos where they announce something then ship it when no one cares anymore (Google how's that Allo doing)
- Snapchat client sucks balls on Android, it drains battery, horrible performance
- low friction to use the feature
But of course both will survive and can coexist.
- 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.
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... but ultimately what matters is: are customers using it? Right now the answer is, without a doubt, yes.
Thousands (Millions?) are debating deleting their snapchats at this very moment. I know I am.
IG did a great job getting a whole lot of activity back on their app. Congrats to them.
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, and might do better by releasing it as a separate app vs inside their main app. But by releasing it within their main app will result in certain failure since SC's crowd of tweens/millennials wouldn't leave SC.
[my responses with minor edits]
I disagree, I think integrating it with their main product is the perfect way to release this. Just look at Periscope ( and Vine ) living as separate products from Twitter, vs FB releasing FB Live deeply embedded into their primary product. The likelihood of the mainstream user's willingness to try out and adopt the new product/feature is increased.
And in this case, I think all the additional features that comes with IG Stories is actually very cohesive with the rest of IG's core experience. All the new stickers, overlays, filters, and I'm sure they'll be adding the same animated video filters are all very natural extensions of the IG user experience.
So many people use Snapchat as a photo/filter editor to then share on IG/Twitter/FB, now they can do that very same experience directly in IG and share it with their existing fans.
And maybe an overlooked aspect is IG's better UX vs snapchat's bizarre stubbornness to maintain their user antagonistic UX.
But I think it's just as telling with SC's recent spate of features that are moving away from the ephemeral nature of the app ( ie Memories ). Where you can store or save Snaps or Stories.... oh you mean sort of like a personal gallery? And now you want to view a collection of the latest/most popular collected snaps from your friends? oh you mean like a newsfeed?
Bottom line is that the photo/messaging apps are converging. And I don't think there's necessarily any loyalty to a particular platform especially if they have very similar features. The crowd will move to the platform where their friends are, and where the celebs/bloggers/artists/influencers are. And IMO I think IG has a slight advantage with that group at this point because of the non-ephemeral nature of their app which led/leads more naturally to those types building their 'brand' and following. Nobody wants to spend hours and energy creating content that simply disappears. But these types have followed the crowd onto SC and lived by the SC rules, but I'd have to believe they would prefer the other model if they had a choice.
So I guess what I'm saying is that these 2 apps are converging to the same point, albeit from different ends of the spectrum with differing pressures. And once they reach a certain level of parity, loyalty to a platform goes out the window, and being able to capture the cool kids and influencers will be the key to where the rest of the crowd goes. So I don't think it's 'certain failure' from IG's point of view, and certainly still anyone's game.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Haven't used the app since then. Every social app is trying to do the same thing it's pretty pointless now imo
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.
Obviously, no. Snapchat's rise is all the proof you need.
(Note, I get that nothing is completely original out there, and that there are a few differences between this and Snapchat.)
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.
They do have the technical talents though. I think one of the word2vec authors was there, but he was giving a talk about using the same technique on emoji icons :-( I would think there are more interesting problems to tackle with the available resources at FB.
Yeah, I'm serious.
Why couldn't they make it possible to have a story that appears as a single tile in your profile permanently?
Instagram seemed to be following this policy until very recently, now the users have got bored and FB is trying desperately to catch up.
I hope Apple Photos releases a simple social network that lets you share photos without all this annoying crap trying to hook young adults.
I liked IG a lot for it's intended purpose: easy to use photo app.
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...)