You don’t need to be a Silicon Valley tech whizz to know that getting on the wrong side of the Kardashian/Jenners is foolish. Four years ago when Kylie Jenner, the most followed woman on Instagram, told her 361 million followers that she no longer used Snapchat, more than $1 billion was wiped off the company’s value in a single day. So, when the 24-year-old queen of influencers voiced her disapproval at a recent unpopular Instagram redesign, Mark Zuckerberg, who owns parent company Meta, was quick to react. Jenner had added her powerful sway to a chorus of disgruntled social media users who were appealing to tech-chiefs to Make Instagram Instagram Again.
It came after the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, announced by video that the photo-sharing app would be experimenting with a few changes. “We’re going to continue to support photos, it’s part of our heritage,” the 39-year-old said. “But I need to be honest. I do believe that more and more of Instagram is going to become video over time.” The update opens to full-screen photos and videos, the same way that arch-rival TikTok does, and shows users more algorithm-suggested content from accounts they don’t follow rather than posts from their family and friends. The backlash was immediate.
