While browsing through my instagram couple days ago, the interfaces has changed. One new session added is a favorite list, symbolized with a star ☆ on a circle. The still empty page says ‘Share With Your Favorites’ and a button to another page where you can add your friends to your new favorite list.

Since Facebook taken over Instagram, there has been so many changes the initial Instagram would never have. Or atleast that’s what I believed. The initial purpose to inspire each others, to get to geotag a picture, and advance filter options are no longer the main reasons why people go to Instagram. I was addicted with Instagram, even until now actually, because of its user interfaces. Instagram used to have a very simple flow which make it easy to use and navigate. The only hard thing to do on Instagram was to choose the filter, which back in 2010, vintage style were back in trend.

Always inventing, always adding new

Now, Instagram more fit in with Facebook than it was, as a photo sharing platform. The removal of map page was one of the first changes Instagram did. For some of us, it was a great features. And then the tagging features came. It was when you can tag a friend on the picture. And the tagging page came. In this features, there was seems no escape to get a bad picture of you got into your page. We just had to deal with it. But then they added new features where you can choose not to show the picture you were tagged with in your profile, which was a life saver. After that Instagram has a secret bookmark session that is different from “liking” and only you can see.

Instagram Story came after, and it was the biggest changes that people thought was a plagiarism to Snapchat but we actually enjoyed. The filter, effect, stickers, boomerang, and more to come.

The innovations and ability to see what trigger users to do more on the app made Instagram now reached 500 million with 45% of them are between age 18-34 (born between 1980-2000).

 

The second life

We, as human, tend to share everything. Platform like Facebook and Instagram give us ability to have our own space to share to other or likewise, to see what other share to us. It was a great tool to keep in keep in touch with each other without even meeting them in real life. It was also a great tool to connect with people from all over the world because internet has no boundaries.

Funny enough, that social media has more become a platform for ‘me myself and I’ rather than getting in touch. We have created ourselves an image for other people to see. (Even more supported by the ability for “Archive” old pictures. This way, people don’t have to see the older side of ourselves). Different than talking face to face, picking up nice photos and edit it nicely giving us a chance to shaped our profile nicely. Just like making a brand identity of ourselves.

Filter ourselves image

The newest features on Intagram, Favorite list, is adjusting to users need to filtered own image to the eyes of the followers. We would definitely don’t want to show the whole of ourselves, as we afraid people will make use of the image. But we might want to share personal stuff to people who really matters.

For many this will be a great tool to avoid creating 2 different accounts, like one for private, and one for personal pictures. But for some, this is a waste of features, and it taken away the initial purpose of Instagram to share and inspire while we actually can send a direct message with images as well if we really want to share it personally and create a conversation.

Social Media reinvented

Instagram new personal homepage group everything in a more proper manner. The four tabs were Grid, List, Tagged, and Bookmarked, now are Grid, List, Favorite List, and Tagged. The order are more consistent as it was all about the users related pictures.

Not all people use social media a tool to share personal stuff too personal. Some were great at using it to tell good news, or just news that matters to others. I still use social media to share my personal stuff, hobbies, and travel tips (therefore I had created 3 instagram accounts for different purpose). I, myself am creating image of myself through social media.