A Glass of Ice Water

Instagram is a mess. By my count, it’s now at least six different services rolled into one. Stories, Reels, Shopping, Live, Messages and — oh yeah — Images.¹

That’s not a joke, but it is a knock. What started as a simple, elegant, fast photo-sharing service is now almost the opposite of all of those things. And that’s fine. Things change. But also, kids, get the fuck off my lawn.

I miss the old Instagram. And I know I’m not alone. But I also know that this has been true for a while now. And as a result, a number of folks have tried to come up with a solution to recapture the lightning in the bottle. The problem, of course, is that this never works. Even if the product were to be the exact same as the old Instagram, the world has changed. A lot. As much as anything, Instagram was right place, right time. We’ve moved and we’re older.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t serve the same — or, at least, a similar — purpose as the old Instagram. While I don’t think you can do it in the exact same way, I think that at a high level, many do feel a photo-sharing-shaped hole in our hearts.² There’s a desire…

All of that is a long-winded way of talking about Glass. It’s a new photo-sharing service which launched on iOS today. I only got access myself this morning, so I don’t have a ton to say about the product experience — for that, read Om Malik’s take, as he’s been testing it for a few months. But my initial gut reaction is that it feels right.

And that’s because it’s focused. It aims to do one thing, and one thing well: let photographers share their photos with others who may enjoy them. It’s not about gaming mechanics or engagement tricks. There are no ‘like’ buttons. The focus, quite literally, is on the photos. Beyond a few menu items, that’s all you see in your feed. It’s wonderful.

As a result, it’s also beautiful. But I want to be mindful that not only is this day one for me, but it’s day one for many folks. A network ultimately is what its users make of it. And it’s possible that Glass becomes a repository of baby photos or latte art. And honestly, that’s fine too, I think. What I personally don’t want is a feed geared towards engagement. Geared towards selfie videos and the like. We have other services for that. They will always do that better than Glass can. I don’t even want video! Keep. It. Simple.

If I have a critique — again, early days caveat — it’s that Glass is a bit intimidating. In onboarding, they do their best to say this isn’t just for professional photographers. But there are clearly many professional photographers on Glass. And they’re damn good. So good that my iPhone shots look a bit, well, amateur as a result.

Instagram brilliantly negated this with a combination of not allowing for uploads, forcing the square ratio, and, of course, leveraging filters in the early days. But all of that changed over time. And again, I don’t think Glass, nor anyone else, should do exactly what Instagram did. Least of which because it won’t work. They need to forge their own path.

And one promising sign in that direction is the model. It’s a paid service. Instagram ads are honestly pretty good — far better than, say, Twitter ads. But Glass isn’t going to out-do Instagram ads. And I definitely value a service like this with no ads and would happily pay for it. And so I have: $29.99 a year.

Anyway, I’m an early fan. If nothing else, the Glass team has done a beautiful job sending us all back to the basics. Perhaps that doesn’t scale to be a sustainable business because the world has largely moved on. But it’s certainly worth the shot. And it’s the best one I’ve seen yet. A true glass of simple, streamlined ice water in Instagram’s complicated, cluttered hell.

Published on August 11, 2021 📆
Written from London, England 🇬🇧
Written on a 2021 11-inch M1 iPad Pro ⌨️

¹ I honestly rarely post images to Instagram anymore, not because I don’t want to, but because they’ve all-but hidden the posting button, making it abundantly clear that’s not what they want you doing on the service. They want you browsing to see ads and to shop. Or to post Reels to combat TikTok. Or to post Stories so they can serve up ads in between.

² Here’s where I’ll note that I adore Google Photos. Honestly, far more than any Google product of late. But it also doesn’t fill the Instagram-shaped-hole. Nor does it really try to. To me, it fills the hole left by Facebook in its own attempt to be not just six, but more like sixty different things.