Instagram 7.5 - Instagram, now with portrait and landscape photos/video

@benjaminnetter Squares are still default (and likely will remain dominant). Squares were great for getting us here, but we see 20%+ of photos now have white borders...skate to where the puck is going :)

@mikeyk People need rules to stick to something. Look at religions for example. Squares were your main rule and one of the reasons I fell in love with Instagram four years ago.

@mikeyk I welcome this move. I'm definitely a user that has a bunch of photos with white borders and follow a bunch of folks who do the same thing. if a square or any specific aspect ratio works better for a photo, then it's great I have the flexibility to do that now without the "Instafit" step I used to do previously. Side note: this is a great opportunity for me to go back and revisit old photos and potentially re-post in the new format.

@mikeyk Upvoted for your very appropriate and awesome use of a hockey saying.

@mikeyk It's similar to the argument of using a poetic structure vs freestyle. Sure, haikus can be limiting, but that makes the format all the more fun. Aesthetically, I like the idea of eliminating bars, but I think that the uniformity of the format is one of Instagram's strengths. I'm not crazy. I'm not going to proclaim this the death of Instagram. I'm just going to say that I don't really agree with the change.

@mikeyk I have been impressed with the very clean design you have on web. It seems like your approach early on was simply displaying content when linked, but now it is actually pleasant to browse through someone's IG feed on the web. Have you ever, or will you now, share the percentages between web traffic and mobile traffic for content consumption? Everyone's screaming mobile first, but I'm wondering how the web is treating you.

@mikeyk And since a lot of us are creators around here, what is an interesting hurdle you had to overcome technically as you hit scale? I recently integrated some of Path's Fast Image Cache into my app because of issues with scrolling performance on iOS. These were not issues I had ever faced before and I'm sure I'm going to have more like this.

@mikeyk I am delighted about this update. And if it was indeed to where the puck was going (20% of photos had bars), what percentage of photos are using a 3rd party to basically hack a repost function? (hint hint 😉)

@mikeyk Updated to 7.5... don't see how to upload portrait photos. Interface looks the same as before (ie, only option to crop to square). Is this US-only update? (Australia here)

@mikeyk did this decision come from within the IG team–or from higher up in the FB ranks?

@rrhoover a large part is learning from the community. We added hashtags way back when because people had started to use multiple accounts to organize collections, Direct because people wanted a way to communicate 1:1, photo tags because people were using the captions. And non-square because 20% of photos already were :)

@mikeyk makes sense! We've taken similar cues from the Product Hunt community. Collections were created when we saw several people bookmarking and saving products they found to trello boards, wunderlist lists, and other tools. LIVE is an extension of the conversations we've had with maker since PH first launched.

@mikeyk Regarding the community, early on some professional photographers were reluctant to post on Instagram (either out of copyright concerns or because filters weren't their thing). Now there is a very strong professional presence. What won over the standouts? Was it the promise of large audience, a particular product change, or a team effort to bring on influential photographers?

@mikeyk Liking the new formats! Speaking of multiple accounts, will you ever support this in the app? It's a pain to have your personal one and manage one or more for you business. Sorry if this has been covered already. Also, what's the *magic trick* to make a logo as profile image look good? I've tried a lot of different combinations, but all of them are compressed too much. It seems some (brands mostly e.g. Nike) uses a different image CDN, which might be the reason.

@calc a combination of audience and also learning over time how an IG presence can be complementary instead of in opposition to a professional presence

@rrhoover really wish i wouldn't have seen that screenshot

@rrhoover it should be very powerful for the travel industry and potentially instagram video ads as well. We work with a lot of companies in this space so we know a thing or two about that ;)

@rrhoover there's been an awakening.

@prateeks The profile view may have been difficult and problematic to design for different aspect ratios. I'm curious to see their approach.

@calc we chose the simplest thing for now which is to center crop for the grid

@dfindles Oh, man, my 13 year old niece was laughing at me the other day because I was trying to zoom into a photo on IG. She said, "Dad tried to do the same thing, you guys are silly.".. Are we silly!?

@marty we're rolling it out throughout the next day or so, so you should have it soon

@mikeyk I updated to 7.5 just now and it's not available. Is it a minor version?

@mikeyk Just reported a problem inside the IG app because I didn't see the icon. I guess that's the "Product Hunt" world we live in -- knowing about features before they are released to the full user base haha. Looking forward to using this feature!

@parkeragee Yeah, I don't see it either yet. Updated to 7.5 as of today but no luck. I'm using the Finnish version of the app. I wonder if the non-US versions get this later on or is this just a bug? :)

@noah_weiss good q's! i'll ask the team to take a look at the OG markup issue