INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
In a blog post today, Instagram announced a new feature: a green status dot that indicates when a user is active on the app
If you&re cruising around Instagram, you can expect to see a green dot next to the profile pics of friends who also are Instagramming right
then and there.
The dot will show up in the direct messaging part of the app but also on your friend list when you go to share a post with
Instagram clarifies that &You will only see status for friends who follow you or people who you have talked to in Direct,& so it meant to
get you talking more to the people you&re already talking to.You can disable the status info in the &Activity Status& bit of the app
Settings menu, where it set to &on& by default.
Prior to the advent of the green dot, Instagram already displayed how long ago someone was
active by including information like &Active 23m ago& or &Active Now& in grey text next to their account info where your direct messages
For those of us who prefer a calm, less real-time experience, the fact that features like these come on by default is a bummer.
Given the
grey activity status text, the status dot may not seem like that much of a change
Still, it one opt-out design choice closer to making Instagram a compulsive real-time social media nightmare like Facebook or Facebook
The quiet, incremental rollout of features like the grey status text is often so subtle that users don&t notice it — as a daily Instagram
user, I barely did.
Making major shifts very gradually is the same game Facebook always plays with its products, layering slight design
changes that alter user behavior until one day you wake up and aren&t using the same app you used to love, but somehow you can&t seem to
Instagram is working on a feature for in-app time management, but stuff like this negates Facebook broader supposed efforts to make our
relationship with its attention-hungry platforms less of a compulsive tic.
It not like users will be relieved that they can now see who is
The last time Instagram users passionately requested a feature it was to demand a return to the chronological feed, and we all know how that
went.Over the years, Instagram users have mostly begged that the app parent company not mess it up, and yet here we are
The Facebookification of Instagram marches on.
It a shame to see that happening with Instagram, which used to feel like one of the only
peaceful places online, a serene space where you weren&t thrown into fits of real-time FOMO because usually your friends were #latergramming
static images from good times previously had, not broadcasting the fun stuff you&re missing out on right now
It hard to see how features like this square with Facebook ostensible mission to move away from its relentless pursuit of engagement in
favor of deepening the quality of user experiences with a mantra of &time well spent.& As users start to resent the steep attentional toll
that makes Facebook &free,& it a shame to see Instagram follow Facebook down the same dark path.
