Instagram launched ten years ago today: the photo-sharing app first hit the App Store on October 6th, 2010, a few months after the release of the iPhone 4. To celebrate, Instagram has added an easter egg to the app that lets you change its home screen icon.

The icons available include the classic Polaroid-style camera designs that were used for more than five years. There are themed variations on the current logo, too, including Pride rainbow colors and monochrome options. The app update also includes another feature: a private map and archive of your stories from the past three years.

To access the new icons, go to the settings within the app and do a long swipe down on the screen to reveal some emoji. Once you’ve swiped down far enough, the icons will be unlocked and you’ll see a message from Instagram.

Here’s an example of how it works:

Here’s a vid of the secret! ?? pic.twitter.com/ZlRIWWa0s7

— Patrick Kosmowski (@kosmowskipat) October 6, 2020

The icons Easter egg still appears to be in the process of rolling out — I’ve got it to work on a couple of phones, but some don’t have it yet.

It sounds like the icons will only be available during October. Instagram’s message reads “this month we’re inviting you to change your app icon to your favorite,” so don’t get too attached.

Source: TheVerge

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When asked a question, What is common between Instagram and Whatsapp? Nothing in particular comes in mind. But there is a big common aspect shared between the two, parent company, the social media giant Facebook. Yes, Instagram and Whatsapp are owned by Facebook.

Till date Instagram and Whatsapp were seperate entity doing their own business without Facebook interference. But that is going to change soon. Facebook is planning to re-brand Instagram and Whatsapp and has already notified employees of those company. So be prepared to see changes from Instagram and Whatsapp to Instagram from Facebook and Whatsapp from Facebook. For this Facebook spokesperson said "We want to be clearer about the products and services that are part of Facebook."

Facebook lately has been in many controversy regarding their security and user data breaches making people say Instagram, Whatsapp manage those data more securely. Doing this rebranding will be a slap to all those who criticize Facebook’s way of doing work making them aware WhatsApp and Instagram are also from the same company they criticize.

Facebook has launched its second TikTok clone, Reels, in over 50 countries through an integration with Instagram, the same method it used in 2016 to try to dethrone Snapchat.

Facebook’s systematic copycat strategy, which the markets have greeted with a 6% share price increase, is among the tactics the U.S. Congress’ antitrust subcommittee documented last week as potentially harmful to competition. Facebook tried four times to clone Snapchat, finally using Instagram as an umbrella and achieving its goal. This time, after failing with Lasso, it’s opted for direct integration with Instagram, a strategy that that has worked so well in the past.

This is precisely what antitrust legislation is supposed to prevent: competitors so powerful and with unlimited resources, that when faced with any initiative that could be considered as competition, they simply buy it or copy. With TikTok being fought on multiple fronts, competitors were bound to try to fill the gap with clones, but Facebook’s strategy is simply based on replicating a rival’s very successful product, and from a position of clear and undoubted leadership. If that’s not a case of predatory competition, then nothing is. 

Beyond the possible consequences of applying antitrust legislation to its activities, Facebook risks turning Instagram into a ragbag that is increasingly hard for users to navigate. What started out as a great app to improve your photos and publish them in a few clicks, now requires users to understand how to post photos and videos, convert them into a Story that is displayed for 24 hours and then disappears or moves into the background, link them to make a longer video, or now, make a Reel, which in turn has several additional possibilities lifted directly from TikTok. This complexity is likely to discourage people who are simply not comfortable with so many options.

There are limits to these kinds of umbrella strategies of bundling features into a successful product and Facebook could have reached them with Instagram. Next time you try to upload a simple photo and find that the app now offers you several more alternatives, some longer, some shorter, some ephemeral, some permanent and some a combination thereof: don’t worry, you haven’t suddenly turned into a technophobe. It’s what happens when an app that was originally simple and well-thought out becomes an umbrella used to cover all kinds of tools copied from others. It’s a strategy that may have worked in the past, but that has surely passed its sell-by date.

Source: Forbes
 

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Influencers, brace yourselves: Instagram may be considering charging a fee to add links to photo captions, a patent application suggests. Mike Murphy discovered it as part of his (fascinating!) weekly roundup of tech patents over at Protocol.

The patent application, which Instagram parent company Facebook first submitted back in 2016, shows a pop-up appearing when the user adds a URL to a caption, asking if the user wants to pay $2 to make the link live.

The patent application (titled “adding paid links to media captions in a social networking system”) describes how the system would work: “If the online system detects the text content of the caption includes a string of link text identifying an address, the online system prompts the posting user to pay a fee in exchange for generating a link.”

This, of course, has long been one of the biggest complaints about Instagram: that if you want to include a link to a story, product, or anything else in your post you can’t add URLs to captions of photos. Most people go the “link in bio” route and verified Insta users can add links to Stories. The question here will be whether Instagram influencers, brands, and other users will be willing to pay a per-link fee. But it seems like a no-brainer to generate revenue for Instagram if this goes into effect.

However, as with any patent, it’s important to note that companies apply for patents all the time for products and services that never come to fruition, so there’s no telling if or when this feature might actually happen. Maybe don’t splurge on that new selfie stick just yet.

source: TheVerge

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