You might have noticed a change to your Instagram profile recently and it hasn’t gone unnoticed by social media users.
Those once immaculately curated square grids are now a thing of the past and in its place comes something else – vertical profiles.
There’s a reason the big bosses at Meta have decided to spice things up a bit and keep people talking.
Find out why below.
Why has Instagram updated square grids?
The platform started testing a rectangular grid on select users in August 2024 but plans for a shake up started way before then.
The refresh has been in the making since 2022, according to Alessandro Paluzzi, who posted the news on X three years ago.
Adam Mosseri, the Head of Instagram, explained the reasons behind the changes and said: ‘Squares are from way back in the day when you can only upload square photos to Instagram…The vast majority of what is uploaded to Instagram today is vertical.
‘It’s either 4 by 3 in a photo or 9 by 16 in a video, and cropping it down to square is pretty brutal.
‘So, I’m hoping we can figure out a way to manage this transition.’
However, Instagram previously said it would wait for social media user feedback before making any changes.
But it seems like the score is settled and vertical profiles are here to stay for now.
How have social media users reacted to Instagram’s update?
Many social media users have been left shocked by the changes and are struggling with the adjustments they will now have to make.
This includes X user drea who posted: ‘As a graphic designer for digital ive never been so f*****g annoyed with anything as this IG update that f***s up the grid orientation.
‘i’m so glad i spent years making 1080×1080 graphics to fit perfectly on a feed just for IG to f**k up the grid.’
@MBSchonze pointed out: ‘Everyone else’s IG grid just change to 4:5 ?? after we’ve all spent years creating square graphics specifically for IG like wtf is this out of all the ways you could improve this app and this is what they want to do smfh.’
@khboi_ simply stated: ‘IG looks SO f*****g ugly now that they changed the grid to 3:4 ratio ew??’
It is safe to say that it might take social media users a bit more time to get used to these changes.
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