Internet break 2.0
On Monday, Kim Kardashian and sister Kylie Jenner reposted a picture to their Instagram stories advocating for Instagram to boomerang itself back to the time where it was all about the pictures. The recent shift to reels and videos is not "it" for the Kardashians, evidently.
The viral image made such a bold statement, "Make Instagram Instagram again" that it seems to have spurred on Instagram's CEO Adam Moressi to comment on the recent backlash against their new direction.
The post includes brackets which state "stop trying to be tiktok I just want to see cute pictures of my friends". When Kardashian reshared the post to her story, she added her own commentary, "PRETTY PLEASE".
In Moressi's response (in video format, of course), he states "we're experimenting with a number of different changes to the app and so we're hearing a concerns from all of you".
"Now I want to be clear", he says, "we're going to continue to support photos". Since it's launch in 2010, photographs have been Instagram's bread and butter, "It's part of our heritage, you know, I love photos and I know a lot of you out there love photos too".
After over a decade since its inception, Instagram has over a billion users, meanwhile TikTok has garnered over a billion users since just 2016 and it's arguably become the trendiest platform, especially for Gen Z.
So it's no wonder Moressi tells us "we're also going to need to evolve because the world is changing quickly and we're going to have to change along with it".
He details that users are shifting more and more towards sharing video on the platform nowadays, but it's important to remember that many content creators are embracing a change that's been forced upon them by the app to ensure engagement.
Professional makeup artist James Charles echoed the feelings of the influencer community with his comment underneath the post, "The reason there’s so much growth for video is because we are being FORCED to post video. The performance of our photos has tanked more than 90%".
In addition to Charles' comment, tonnes of users are parroting the slogan reposted by Kardashian, commenting below Moressi's video "make Instagram Instagram again". One Twitter user even stated "Sick of this TikTok clone". Hashtag bring back filtered pictures of people's dinner.
Do you double tap the changes made to Instagram lately? Let us know.