Instagram Profile Grids Are Vertical Rectangles Now Because Everything Must Be TikTok
Instagram was built on squares and filters. That’s been baked into the platform since the very beginning. But the “Landscape vs Portrait” wars are over and vertical won, for better or worse. And now that TikTok might really be screwed in the US, the “let’s all be TikTok” craze of the other platforms is accelerating.
Instagram’s profile grids will display content as rectangles instead of squares as part of a change rolling out “over the weekend,” Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said in an Instagram Story on Friday.
“I know some of you really like your squares. And square photos are sort of the heritage of Instagram. But at this point, most of what’s uploaded, both photos and videos, are vertical in their orientation,” Mosseri said. It’s a “bummer to overly crop them,” he added.
Mosseri recognizes that the change might be a “bit of a pain,” but he thinks that it’s a “transitional” pain. “I think people will, over the long run, be excited that more of their photos and more of their videos are actually visible as intended in the profile as opposed to aggressively cropped,” Mosseri said.
Mosseri’s justification is pretty similar to what he said in August when Instagram confirmed it was conducting a “limited test” of the change.
As you can imagine, many users are not at all happy about this:
I’m increasingly convinced that Mosseri is an idiot. To implement this and NOT allow the user to move the crop of an existing image (which is allowed on Reels) is beyond stupid. It shows a total disregard for how carefully his users curate and crop for their grids. Nice to see he’s getting rinsed on his own profile for this.
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This transition makes no sense. Photos are not cropped because they are uploaded based on the 1080 X 1080 square. The only things that were cropped where covers for reels that may not have been created as a square but then do not fit over the reel. The beauty of IG has really long been gone. Ever since IG tried so hard to be Tik Tok, it has lost its uniqueness. When it was a photo sharing platform it was a joy. Then, they tried to be YouTube and added long-form video. Then, during the pandemic, they tried to compete with Tik Tok and added reels, taking the long-form videos or IG TV away. Now they are changing the only thing that was unique to IG, the square posts. This is wild work! Unnecessary wild work! I also don't like how the moved the bio placement and the info about the number of followers. I guess Mark need to keep his job so he thought of something outrageous to do.
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The problem with the grid is that the images in the grid are displaying an image ratio that you cannot post. The rectangles appear to be in a 3:4 ratio, but the tallest image you can post on Instagram is 4:5. this means that if you post a still image that has a vertical orientation and is 4:5, there will still be a crop. What I'm saying is -- the rationale makes no sense. This feels more like a play to orient users to vertical video.
It’s not that I don’t think that users will get over this eventually, it’s that I’m increasingly convinced that Meta and Instagram’s repeated willingness to really test their users tolerance for pain is getting old, fast. This change was almost certainly always in the cards and it’s probably good to get it out of the way now, but eventually they’re gonna have to chill. No platform lasts forever, fellas