No Filter
No Filter: How Instagram Transformed Business, Celebrity and Culture by Sarah Frier
🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences
Instagram has developed significantly over the 10 years it has existed. There have been many changes in what it gives users. It has turned from a place of discovery to a place to validate yourself.
Facebook and Instagram, when merged, had very different ideas about what makes a good social media company. Facebook was following a very different strategy that Instagram firmly disagreed with meaning there was lots of conflicts.
Instagram has had a significant influence on the way business is done, how celebrities interact with the world and even the culture we all live in. The end result was unintended by the co-founders.
🎨 Impressions
This book was a fascinating insightful look into the creation and evolution of Instagram. It is in-depth and well researched following the full story.
How I Discovered It
As an Instagram user who believes the app has changed the way we interact I was keen to hear how the app came about and how it managed to influence us so much. This also appears to be the first major headline book on Instagram.
Who Should Read It?
If you are interested in the impact Instagram has had on the world and keen to hear more about the backstory this is the book. Or, if you are generally interested in technology, particularly as the social media scene took of and developing digital products, the book provides great context and strategies.
✍️ My Top 3 Quotes
Facebook is like a constant high school reunion, with everyone catching up with their acquaintances on the life milestones that had happened since they last talked. Instagram is like a constant first date, with everyone putting the best version of their lives on display.
Describing Facebook: Every single activity the company did - deciding which features to build and how to design them, where to put them in the app, how to push them to users - stand from a religious obsession with growth, marketed to employees as a moral mission.
With Instagram it is not what was posted there, but in how these posts make people feel.
📒 Summary + Notes
The Idea of Instagram
On Instagram, you could dive into the life of a reindeer herder in Norway or a basket weaver in South Africa. And you could share and reflect on your own life in a way that was profound too.
It gives you a glimpse of humanity and changes your whole perspective on everything and the importance of it. Instagram is this mirror on ourselves and allows each of us to contribute our own experience to the understanding of this world. Instagram wanted to promote this sense of discovery. They became aesthetic tastemakers for a generation, responsible for and viewing us with a reference for visually aesthetic experiences that we can share with our friends and strangers for the rewards of likes and followers. They invested heavily in an editorial strategy to show how they intended Instagram to be used: as a venue for different perspectives and creativity.
Facebook vs Instagram
Facebook and its discussions with regulators were right about one thing: Instagram is reaching a different audience than they were. Facebook was for quite real names; Instagram allowed an imitation. Facebook had re-shared and hyperlink; Instagram did not. Facebook was about mutual friendships; on Instagram you can follow people even if they didn’t follow you back.
Facebook is like a constant high school reunion, with everyone catching up with their acquaintances on the life milestones that had happened since they last talked. Instagram is like a constant first date, with everyone put the best version of their lives on display.
On Instagram, people wanted to post things that would attract the duration of an audience. If an image was beautiful and well designed, it would do well on the app. So people changed their behaviour, seeking out more things that would do well, appreciating well-plated meals, street style fashion, and travel. Phrases like 'outfit for the day' and 'food porn' and 'Instagramable' entered the vocabulary. Nobody said 'Facebookable'. Instagram had a higher bar.
Facebook's Acquisition of Instagram
The final cash in stock for Facebook's purchase of Instagram was $715 million – not the $1 billion number that made all the headlines. Still, the billion-dollar number made the Instagram founders feel like had they come inside the company with something to prove. They could feel the scepticism.
Besides the public commentary from friends and media, Facebook employees would question their managers about the value of the deal. Looking into the glass garage as they walked by, to try to understand it. If this is what it took to get rich, maybe they should just quit and build a competitor, in the hopes that Facebook would acquire their company.
Facebook's Strategy
Facebook‘s overarching goal was to connect the world through social networking. The language and marketing material sounded noble, like Facebook was in the business of enabling empathy for humankind. In practice, it was quite literal: to get as many people as possible to use Facebook as often as possible. Every single activity the company did - deciding which features to build and how to design them, where to put them in the app, how to push them to users - stand from a religious obsession with growth, marketed to employees as a moral mission.
While Instagram was trying to get people to enjoy new interests, Facebook was using data to figure out exactly what people already wanted, and then giving more of it to them. Facebook automatically analysed every tiny action from its users, not just the comments and clicks but the words they typed and did not search, the post they hovered over while scrolling and did not click, other peoples names they typed and didn't search. Facebook were then able to use that data, for instance, to figure out who your closest friends were, defining the strength of the relationship between zero and one which they called a friend coefficient.
The people rated the closest to one would always be at the top of your newsfeed. Facebook was all about personalisation, not just the ordering of its newsfeed but the advertising targeting. The business could sell something with a message tailored to Facebook's cat lovers in Toronto with college degrees, and sell the same product differently to Facebook's blue-collar dog lovers in Vancouver. It was a revolutionary advertising business, because on television advertising, you have no idea who they were reaching.
But in order to get that data, Facebook had to grow. They need to grow not just in numbers of users, but the time spent by those people taking up all of those little actions that added up to the stores of knowledge about what people wanted.
Building Instagram at Facebook
The team came up with three Instagram values, all of which included not so subtle notes on the culture clashes with Facebook.
Community First - meaning all the decisions should be centred around serving a good feeling when using Instagram, not necessarily for more screen time. Too many notifications would violate that principle.
Simplicity Matters - meaning that before any new product could be rolled out, engineers have to think about whether they were solving a specific users problem, or if making a change is even necessary, or actually might over complicate the app. It was the opposite of Facebook’s 'move fast and break things' motto where building for growth is valued over usefulness or trust.
Inspiring Creativity - which meant Instagram is going to try to define the app as an artistic outlet, focusing on content that was genuine and meaningful. This was a rejection of the self-promotional fakery that was already starting to define some of Instagram's popular accounts. It was also a very different strategy on Facebook algorithmic personalisation approach.
Instagram encouraged celebrities to use the app to document what they saw in their daily lives, taking power back from the paparazzi in control and having their own narratives. The strategy for celebrities on Instagram was quite a careful balance, different from what the paparazzi offered: celebrities who only logged on to post about their upcoming album or movie, the followers would see their efforts as promotional. If they included that content mixed in with organic posts from their everyday lives, they would become relatable and then they follow it would be more likely to lead to commercial success. However, stars were used to being paid for the photos that showed up in celebrity magazines. But Instagram would not be compensated anyone not directly at least.
The sentiment was to build trust and intrigue. Compared to others in the technology industry, the Instagram co-founders were easy-going, trying to be a friend more than a sales person, working to genuinely understand the product's effect on high profile users. It was hard to imagine Mark Zuckerberg ever mingling at a party like this, with a secret service level security detail and his public relations entourage.
With the rise of Amazon and other sites, there was an abundance of options for whatever people wanted to buy. Before making purchases, people spent time reading reviews and hunting for the best deal. A post on Instagram provided a rare opportunity to get consumers to make a spontaneous decision, since they trusted the person’s endorsement it felt like users were making an informed choice.
Instagram Embedded in our Culture
Years later, as millions more people become Insta famous-enough to get paid for sponsored content, Instagram started to feel like visiting an alternate reality where anything negative in life could be cured by a purchase. There would be so many people pretending to be vulnerable so they can sell products that they pretended to love, which supported the lifestyle they pretended was authentic.
Employees thought of the app as a democratizing force, allowing regular people to bypass the normal societal gatekeepers to simply show, based on their Instagram following, that they were worth investing in. The Instagram follow became like a Q score, a way of measuring brand recognition for anyone.
Conclusions:
People thought that given important stuff breaks on Twitter and world leaders have conversations on Twitter, it was more important. But what everyone would eventually find out, with Instagram it is not what was posted there, but in how these posts make people feel. It wasn’t about using information, it was about individuals and what they wanted to present to the world, and whether others thought they were interesting or creative or beautiful or valuable. Pretty pictures were just tools within Instagram allowing the pursuit of being understood and validated by the rest of society, where likes, comments and even money were giving users a small slice of power over their own destiny.
