{"id":5424,"date":"2017-05-11T11:08:51","date_gmt":"2017-05-11T18:08:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/?p=5424"},"modified":"2017-05-11T11:53:17","modified_gmt":"2017-05-11T18:53:17","slug":"quality-quantity-and-how-instagram-is-evolving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/2017\/05\/11\/quality-quantity-and-how-instagram-is-evolving\/","title":{"rendered":"Quality, quantity, and how Instagram is evolving"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201c<strong>Take a human desire<\/strong>,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/2013\/09\/ev-williams-xoxo\/\">says<\/a> Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, \u201cpreferably one that has been around for a really long time\u2026Identify that desire and use modern technology to <strong>take out steps<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s interesting to think about this as Instagram\u2019s identity has evolved in a \u201clol nothing matters&#8221; Snapchat world. (I initially typed \u201cSnapshat\u201d; Freudian?). Founder Kevin Systrom used to like to describe the product as \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/e56964b0-1a22-11e5-a130-2e7db721f996\">a visual walkie talkie<\/a>,\u201d but plainly that wasn\u2019t true. As their head of product\u00a0Kevin Weil said, &#8220;It became a place where <strong>people kept raising the bar on themselves<\/strong> in terms of the quality of what they had to achieve to post. We didn\u2019t want that.\u201d If you haven\u2019t yet, listen to the This American Life episode about teenage girls\u2019 Instagram anxiety referenced in &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/03\/the-instagram-lobster-trap\/\">The Instagram lobster trap<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, Instagram has found that lowering the bar\u2014creating an impermanent, low-stress complement to one\u2019s highlight reel\u2014is key. They need bottom-up activity to make things work:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;Your connections with your friends and your family are the thing that make Instagram work. All the data supports that <strong>if you follow more friends and engage with your friends, your activity goes through the roof<\/strong>. If you just follow more celebrity content or more interest-based content, that doesn\u2019t move the needle at all.\u201d &#8211; Kevin Systrom, Instagram co-founder<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>You should read <a href=\"http:\/\/ben-evans.com\/benedictevans\/2017\/2\/17\/surfing-users-facebook-and-snap\">Benedict Evans\u2019s observations<\/a>\u00a0(starts dry, but solid) about all this. Among them:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>There are millions of people who will post beautiful pictures of coffee or 1960s office blocks, or like a photo by a celebrity, but there are <strong>billions<\/strong> who&#8217;ll share a snapshot of their lunch, beer, dog or child. Instagram is moving to capture that in the same way Messenger and WhatsApp captured chat.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Seriously, it\u2019s worth the read.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" title=\"NewImage.png\" src=\"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/NewImage-11.png\" alt=\"NewImage\" width=\"600\" height=\"256\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cTake a human desire,\u201d says Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, \u201cpreferably one that has been around for a really long time\u2026Identify that desire and use modern technology to take out steps.\u201d It\u2019s interesting to think about this as Instagram\u2019s identity has evolved in a \u201clol nothing matters&#8221; Snapchat world. (I initially typed \u201cSnapshat\u201d; Freudian?). Founder Kevin [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,3,14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5424"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5424"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5425,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5424\/revisions\/5425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}