Let's Discuss Instagram

And Let's Discuss an Alternative

“A painting of a crowd of people hating Instagram” - A collaboration between Clint and OpenAi’s DALL-E

We are taking a break from our Instagram marketing series to discuss more deeply the changes that have occurred at the social networking giant recently. Don’t worry, we will get back to the Instagram tactics next week.

We know that a lot of artists are disappointed with some of the recent changes at Instagram. The algorithm has evolved, and many people, including artists, are having trouble seeing the engagement that they used to. In fact, Instagram has caused quite the uproar in the past two weeks with high profile complaints about the service morphing into a TikTok clone coming from two of their biggest users, Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian. Twitter is abuzz with hate for the new Instagram feed. And Instagram’s CEO announced they would (temporarily) walk back some of the changes. However, last week on Meta’s earnings call, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg made it clear that the future of Facebook looks like TikTok and that Instagram won’t be going back to straight up photo sharing with a chronological feed. The “walking back” of the changes feels like a hollow promise, and Meta is known for pushing ahead with their plans while throwing users a temporary bone.

This week, Jack Conte, CEO of Patreon made it clear that he also is pissed off at Instagram on behalf of creators:

“I realize I’m a bit biased as CEO of Patreon here. I get that, but this is a big deal for creators,” Conte said about the shift to AI-heavy feeds, ironically, in an Instagram Reel. “We spent years investing in these platforms, building followers, building communities, and these changes remind us once again that these are not our followers, these are Facebook’s users.” [source]

Anger over Instagram’s never-ending imitation of TikTok has been simmering among creators for a while, especially after Instagram head Adam Mosseri declared that the platform is “no longer just a photo-sharing app.”

I’ve been expecting Facebook to ruin Instagram for a couple of years, they tend to ruin everything they touch eventually. However, the changes to Instagram have happened faster than I expected and I recently let our Facebook group in on a secret project we’ve been working on - namely:

We are launching a new photo sharing network that works very similarly to the original Instagram: Free, Easy & Sane Photo Sharing For Artists & Photographers. Chronological Feed. No Crazy Algorithm. No TikTok Style Videos.

As you can see from the image below, the artists in our group love the idea and there are 439 comments all basically saying “do it, and hurry!”

Artists need a place online, a social network, to show their work and connect with people. And it’s now clear that they need a social network that is NOT run by “Big Tech” who will not hesitate to betray the very users that made them successful. They need a social network run by people who are dedicated to artists, who are dedicated to beauty, and who worship creation. So we have built such a network.

It is called “Musero”, and we have already been testing it with a few early users.

Here’s a screenshot:

And here’s a mobile view, showing a beautiful painting by Trisha Adams in the main feed, the way an artful social network should (no dancing teenagers here):

And finally, here’s an early announcement we’ve created for Musero:

We will be opening Musero up to everyone soon, the main delay is we are currently in the process of getting the app into the App Store and that will take a few weeks.

If you are interested in a sane alternative to Instagram, and if you are interested in helping us build a social network for artists, by artists, and for the arts, please sign up for the waitlist today. Just click the button below, provide your email address, and we’ll email you as soon as we are ready to let more users into Musero.

Artfully Yours,

Clint