I believe that all the noise that’s been around Instagram in the recent past contributed to give it more attraction and to keep people to still use it despite all the changes they’ve been making.
My personal experience on the topic tells me that, while a lot of photographers are fed up with the logic that rules the posts distribution, another lot of people find it still appealing because of the quantity of content being shared there every minute.
And actually both are right, in some way.
I’m a photographer, this you know now, and for this reason I agree with those saying that producing and posting content that’s not going to be seen even by the people who follow me, is a complete nonsense. It’s somehow frustrating.
An artist creates art for an inner feel of making it and also for it to be enjoyed by others.
So being part of a social that, instead of spreading my work, tends to hide it, it’s a waste of time and energy.
I looked for an alternative a few years ago, and I found it in Vero.
This platform is beautiful, easy, and it puts creators and content to the center.
I love posting there because I’m sure that people who follow my work will see it.
And I like scrolling my feed because I know that all content shared by the creators I’m interested to follow will be just there for me to enjoy it.
Without having to break my thumb to skip ad, sponsored posts, pointless reels and stuff like that.
BUT…
People will not move away from Instagram. Some photographers did, and I found them on Vero as well. However, the majority will stay on IG. Because the audience is there. Business is there. It took years to build this monopoly and they started with, back then, a good product. Plus, there were no competitors, which made it a little easier.
Last summer, Peter McKinnon posted a few videos on his Youtube channel pointing out how bad Instagram had become, especially for photographers. And he publicised his new account on Vero.
The result was a massive migration of people (we’re talking about several hundreds of thousands) to the other platform.
Now, after less than one year, I can’t tell how many of them are still active there.
I also tried many times to tell my friends and fellow creators to have a look at the alternatives, and the answer had always been the same: there’s nobody there.
And my reply, saying that there will never be enough people if nobody will move, seems to fall into the void.
And this is a fact, proved by a few years of observation.
If I try to be totally unbiased, I understand the creators who took ages to build their user base on IG: they can’t just trash years of work to completely jump somewhere else. It’s less hard to adapt to the rules of the platform.
To be honest, I myself had to restart using it, even if I didn’t want to. The reason is one of the above. My contacts are mainly there. I mean, the concrete ones: models, make-up artists and all the people involved in my creative process.
I’m not saying I like Instagram: I don’t. I love to share my works on Vero way better than on any other competitor. And I will use it as my primary social platform for as long as it will keep the promises of being different.
My fear is that a real change cannot take place until the majority of the mass influencers will make the move at the same time. Unfortunately, the sick way of using social media will still be led by the mainstream apps for quite some time more.
Like Andy Adams said:
Love it or hate it, IG is still the place to be
Take care and talk soon!