Not a great strategy

Via Nick Heer, I’ve learnt that a third-party Instagram client that launched as recently as a week ago was removed from the App Store.

TechCrunch:

Last week, a startup called Un1feed launched an Instagram client called The OG App, which promised an ad-free and suggestion-free home feed along with features like creating custom feeds like Twitter lists. The app raked up almost 10,000 downloads in a few days, but Apple removed the app from the App Store for violating its rules earlier this week.

Separately, Un1feed said that Meta disabled all team members’ personal Instagram and Facebook accounts.

[…]

“This app violates our policies and we’re taking all appropriate enforcement actions,” a Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch. The company also pointed to a blog post about clone sites.

Nick Heer:

Thereby illustrating the difference between what some users value about Instagram and what Meta values. Users want to view friends’ photos and videos on their own terms; Meta wants them to watch suggested Reels and shop.

I’ve titled this brief post Not a great strategy because it’s what I would say to both the Un1feed guys and Facebook/Meta.

Launching a clean Instagram third-party client that actually makes the Instagram experience better, is praiseworthy; but expecting that Facebook/Meta would be okay with it, that’s naïve. By the way, in an update to the story, TechCrunch adds:

Apple told TechCrunch that it removed The OG App as it was accessing Instagram’s service in an unauthorized manner, which violated the Meta-owned platform’s terms. The company cited section 5.2.2 of its App Store review guidelines, which states that if an app is displaying content from a third-party service, it should do it in accordance with the service’s terms of use.

So yes, this client wasn’t bound to last for very long.

But what about Facebook/Meta’s strategy? They have been progressively morphing Instagram into something, some thing that wants to keep being relevant by mimicking what a more successful competitor — TikTok — has already nailed.

It’s very unlikely that those who are already addicted to TikTok decide to drop it and switch to Instagram. Maybe they’ll watch a reel or two if it’s from one of their friends (which isn’t super-easy in itself, given just how much Instagram pushes content created by people you don’t know), but that’s it. And it’s very unlikely that someone wanting to express themselves and create stuff in TikTok format would favour Instagram over TikTok. It’s simply too late to think you can beat TikTok at what it does best.

Meanwhile Facebook/Meta is leaving behind what Instagram has done best for quite a long time: a place to share photos and moments from everyday life, and also a place to even showcase your work in a more professional and commercial manner.

No one among my friends and acquaintances likes Instagram now. And it’s not just early days nostalgia. It’s that the experience within the platform has become confusing and user-hostile. A friend commented that it’s like watching a TV channel where the contents are 5% movies and 95% TV commercials, and you never know when you’ll be able to watch the movies.

Sometimes I think that all the extraneous suggested reels and promoted content and non-linear timeline are a way to keep users doomscrolling so that they spend much more time within the platform that they normally would. The problem is that the ratio is wrong — the extraneous content is simply too overwhelming, and as a consequence people get frustrated and exit the app.

Or stop using Instagram altogether. I used to be a heavy Instagram user until Facebook acquired it. At the time, I didn’t want to delete my account, but I stopped uploading photos and kept my account active so that I could continue to comment and connect on other friends and follower’s photos/videos/stories. But even this kind of activity has become difficult and unpleasant simply because Facebook/Meta have decided to throw unwanted content in my face as I scroll the fucked-up timeline in the hope of finding a friend’s photo or moment to react to. As a result, I’m finding myself accessing Instagram more and more infrequently. And I’m definitely not alone in this.

Tech companies today are obsessed with evolving because the idea of keep doing what you do best doesn’t seem viable in the long run. But I disagree. Of course I’m not saying that one shouldn’t change anything at all and stay still, but deviating too much from the formula that made you extremely successful isn’t a great strategy either, as we can see in Instagram’s case. Despite its missteps and flaws, Twitter has done a better job at this. Twitter today is very different from what it was in 2006, it has certainly become richer and more complex, but the core idea is the same. Twitter, too, has been adding intrusions to the timeline and has pushed for a non-linear timeline, but the non-linearity is fortunately still optional, and the intrusions aren’t overwhelming to the point that you stop seeing tweets from your friends and people you follow.

Instagram on the other hand has made insecurity its instability and volatility.