Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Yesterday, we wrote about OG App, an Instagram clone that doesn’t look like a commercial break in the middle of your favorite TV show. But only a day after its release, the app was kicked out of the Apple store.
Instagram’s parent company, Meta, claims that it has taken “enforcement actions” against OG App. What’s more, one of the OG App’s founders claims that the personal Instagram and Facebook profiles of his team have been permanently banned. A coincidence? I don’t think so.
I’m pretty sure that all of us are sick of Instagram and its ads, people we don’t follow, and dumb Reels all over the place. But there’s a way to make it nearly as fun to use as it used to be. No, silly, of course Meta will never make Instagram great again. But the OG App just might.
This new app lets you back to basics: it removes a gazillion of ads you’re now seeing everywhere, as well as other unnecessary and irrelevant content that appears on your Feed. It’s almost as Instagram was while we still liked it.
If you’ve ever received unwanted nude photos on Instagram (ladies will know what I’m talking about), you might soon be able to filter them out. Mobile developer and reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi recently discovered that Instagram is working on nudity protection for direct messages. While nudity is already not allowed in posts (with some exceptions), this could be now moved to messaging as well to increase safety on the platform.
When it first showed up, BeReal seemed like a breath of fresh air among all those social media filled with filtered faces, staged lives, and fake smiles. This app was dubbed “anti-Instagram,” as its goal was to have the users share the genuine, unstaged moments of their lives.
But is BeReal losing its point only a few months after its launch? I have some thoughts about it, and I believe there are two main reasons why this app might fail before it even properly takes off.
It looks like TikTok isn’t just the app other social media are trying to copy. This time, it’s TikTok that’s copying features from another app that’s been rapidly growing in popularity.
That’s right, I’m talking about BeReal. After Instagram, now TikTok now has its own version of real-time dual camera view. It’s called “TikTok Now” and it lets you share “your most authentic moments” with your followers.
In an attempt to be as popular as TikTok, Instagram has been pushing Reels in every possible way. One would say that the platform is seeing a benefit from turning almost everything into a Reel. However, judging from a recently leaked report, this isn’t quite true. It’s exactly the opposite.
According to the report, Instagram users are not really spending much time watching TikTok-esque short-form videos. What’s more. it appears that most Reels users “have no engagement whatsoever.”
It’s inevitable that Instagram will no longer be the main place new creatives share their work.
Some of you, like me, may think we’re already there, especially given some of the recent decisions made towards a very heavy-handed push towards video and a very open move away from stills.
But regardless of the choices made by IG, no matter what they did or do, IG will inevitably fall off as the cool place to share your work and the core reason for this is time.
The brutal truth of this was echoed when Facebook was no longer the ‘cool’ place to be and that happened when fewer and fewer young people signed up to the service. Simply put, nobody wants to be on the same social media site as their parents and when young people fail to engage, creativity suffers.[Read More…]
Instagram has introduced a set of new rules for new teens who join the platform, as well as those who are already on it. From now on, new people under 16 will automatically see as little as possible sensitive content as it will become the default setting. At the same time, the teens already on Instagram will get prompts to review their settings and set the Sensitive Content Control to the strictest option.
But as always, the “care for teens” comes with a catch. Although they will be forced or prompted to filter out sensitive content to the max – they’ll still be allowed to change from the default setting.
Instagram likes Reels. It likes them so much that it turns all your videos into them, and now it lets you cross-post them to Facebook too. From now on, if you use both social media apps, you can post your Reels directly to both of them.
Along with cross-posting between the apps, some other changes are coming to Instagram as well. And yes, of course, they’re Reels-related. But if you’ve started gathering likes and comments through the TikTok-esque short videos, you may actually like these.
Earlier this year, Instagram started testing non-fungible tokens or NFTs for a limited number of US users. But if you live elsewhere and want to jump on the bandwagon, rejoice! From now on, you can buy and sell NFTs on Instagram in 100 countries in Africa, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and the Americas.
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