Something I’ve wanted to say for a long time but never found an opportunity is that the term “social media” doesn’t describe the phenomena well. Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and co. are all distant forms of socialization and as “media” it’s quite difficult to hold Tweets or Stories in comparison with, say, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy or the 24 hour news cycle. The term “social media” is the cleaned up version for job titles and business plans. Networks is much better. With that introduction, consider this exposition of changes to Instagram from Caitlin McGarry of MacWorld:

Instagram carries a pressure that other social networks don’t. Every photo must be perfectly composed, your feed artfully curated, otherwise you won’t rack up double-digit likes. Quelle horreur! (But seriously, it’s depressing when only a couple followers like your carefully crafted image.) It’s not uncommon for people to use high-end photo-editing apps to add gloss to their images before sharing them to Instagram.

There’s a grand irony in Instagram, that is was created and to make sharing photos easy and painless, and now it’s become difficult (because of their new “Stories” feature) and “depressing” (her words). I encourage everyone to reconsider whether social media is worth the price, which of course isn’t monetary, but in submitting your intellectual property and becoming addicted to their social currency.

NYT Tech Tip:

Like many other social media services, your Instagram posts can be public or private, depending on the level of sharing you wish to do. The site’s default setting is public, however — which means that anybody browsing the Instagram site can see your posts and user profile.

Two thoughts:

1. Anything on the Internet is public;
2. The company that allows files to be uploaded for free to their external server will seek to pay their light bill and cut divided cheques.

Here’s a tech tip: don’t bother uploading to Instagram unless you’re okay with that.

Instagram is testing a re-design of their app that’s more in line with the iOS 7 aesthetic. While I no longer post to Instagram for copyright and privacy reasons, as a user, I’ve always appreciated their app and its design because it was a bold opinion is a sea of faceless black, white, and blue minimalism. However, as a developer, the faceless minimalism trend is great because it makes my job easier.