Photographers, designers, and other creative types turned off by Instagram’s pivot to TikTok-like features are tentatively moving to alternative platforms.
Why it matters: Instagram has long been a digital gallery space for artists of all kinds, helping them find an audience, connect with other creatives, and land paid gigs.
- But the Meta-owned platform’s gradual evolution into an ad- and shopping-heavy app that favours short-form video and algorithmically selected content has left the future of digital art-sharing in flux.
The context: Instagram has been de-emphasising still imagery for years. But more recent changes, such as a focus on shopping and a big increase in the amount of suggested content that appears in users’ feeds, has forced a reckoning.
A handful of rival apps and platforms are reporting spikes in user activity.
- They include relatively new upstarts, like Glass (for photographers of all kinds) and Grainery (for film photographers, specifically).
- Even old favourites like Flickr — a pioneer in digital photography-sharing that owned the loyalty of serious photographers in the mid-2000s — are seeing a boost and some creatives are turning back to Tumblr, another long-time artist haven.
- Others are also experimenting with e-newsletters.
What they’re saying: “We started working on Glass … because we felt like the photo community that existed on Instagram that built the back of Instagram doesn’t exist anymore,” says Glass head of community and marketing Daniel Agee.
- Agee says that Instagram’s ad- and sales-supported model have made it a crummy place for artists trying to share their work.
- By contrast, Glass is subscription-based, at $4.99/month.
Yes, but: None of these services is likely to rack up anywhere close to Instagram’s billion-plus users. Glass’s user base, for example, is in the mid-five-digit range.
- Choosing a strategy that doesn’t depend on mega-scale can make long-term sense — smaller online groups built around specific interests (like some small subreddits) tend to be healthier environments than huge free-for-all networks (like Twitter).
- But scale helps creatives seeking to build reputations and sell stuff. Some will end up embracing video, and many will simply get used to Instagram’s changes.
The big picture: This is all part and parcel of the long-standing tension between creators and platforms. Creators have relied on apps like Instagram and YouTube to reach their audiences — leaving them exposed to the whims of the platforms and the kinds of content they prioritise.
