Instagram ventures into full-size territory with the launch of landscape and portrait imagery
“Visit the Eiffel Tower in Paris, as I did last year, and you’ll see tourists contorting themselves to try and fit the length of the monument into Instagram’s iconic square frame. Even after Instagram began letting you shoot in landscape mode, you could still only share your work as a square. That all changes today: Instagram is updating its Android and iOS apps to enable native support for full-size landscape and portrait photos and video inside the app. They’ll run alongside the traditional square photos, which will remain the default for photos shared on Instagram.
“When you access your photo gallery from within the updated app, you’ll now see a format button above the camera roll. You can use this button to toggle between square and full-size images. From there, you can zoom in and out to choose the best crop for your photos.
“Initially, Instagram adopted square photos as a way of distinguishing itself from other photo-sharing apps. But they were also a practical choice. They helped provide a more consistent look as you scrolled down the feed, and they also looked better on smaller phone screens.”
To read the full article, visit The Verge.
A number of major brands have already begun testing Instagram’s new image orientations
“It’s hip to be beyond square. Or something like that.
“It turns out that nearly one in five photos or videos people post aren’t in the square format, and we know that it hasn’t been easy to share this type of content on Instagram: friends get cut out of group shots, the subject of your video feels cramped and you can’t capture the Golden Gate Bridge from end to end,” Instagram wrote in a blog post.
“Now, when choosing a photo or video, you can tap the format icon to adjust the orientation to portrait or landscape instead of square. Once you share the photo, the full-sized version of it will appear to all of your followers in feed in a beautiful, natural way. To keep the clean feel of your profile grid, your post will appear there as a center-cropped square.
“Adobe, Mercedes, Star Wars and of course, Instagram themselves are already publishing their images using the new orientations.”
To read the full article, visit Marketing Land.
The Next Web’s Amanda Connolly believes Instagram will lose its identity if it continues to push away from what made it unique
“When Instagram first started out, it was promoting the retro feel of instant photos that Polaroid had successfully made famous in times gone by.
“Limiting the format to a square was Instagram’s way of paying homage to the original size of instant pictures and using its filters you could give your images a unique, vintage feel. It wasn’t something that had been done properly before and Instagram just happened to get it spot on at the right time.
“As with anything that’s popular, the app was duplicated in various forms by thousands of developers and social networks, but none of them successfully replicated Instagram’s square formatting. It’s the one characteristic that has remained part of Instagram’s identity and untouched since the beginning.
“That’s why when the Facebook-owned company revealed it’s caving and letting people share in landscape and portrait as well, I couldn’t help but feel like it’s giving up part of its identity.”
To read the full article, visit The Next Web.
Twitter has released its diversity goals for the year ahead, and surprisingly, it’s only looking to boost the number of women working for the network by 1%
“Twitter is aiming for 35 per cent of its payroll to comprise women, and 11 per cent to come from “underrepresented minorities”.
“The tech giant outlined its global goals for “a move diverse Twitter” in the coming year, and also set specific targets for its US business.
“As well as increasing women in the company overall to 35 per cent, it wants to see 16 per cent of its tech roles and 25 per cent of its leadership roles in the US held by women.
“Currently, 34 per cent of its global workforce is female, with 13 per cent in tech roles and 22 per cent in a position of leadership.”
To read the full article, visit The Drum.
Twitter believes these revised figures will increase the representation of women throughout the industry
“We want the makeup of our company to reflect the vast range of people who use Twitter. Doing so will help us build a product to better serve people around the world. While we’ve already been working towards internal diversity goals at different levels of the company, I’m very pleased to report that we are now setting company-wide diversity goals – and we’re sharing them publicly.
“We considered simply setting company-wide hiring goals, but we don’t want to stop at that. If our aim is to build a company we can really be proud of – one that’s more inclusive and diverse – we need to make sure it’s a great place for both new and current employees to work and to grow. That’s why these new goals focus on increasing the overall representation of women and underrepresented minorities throughout the whole company.”
To read the full post, visit Twitter’s official blog.
Periscope engineer, Sara Haider discusses the difficulties women face in tech in a vlog with Re/code
“For the second episode of our new video series, “The 26%: Women Speak Out on Tech’s Diversity Crisis,” Re/code invited Ilona to meet Sara Haider, an Android engineer at Periscope, which was recently acquired by Twitter.
“Haider taught herself to code at a young age. She previously worked at Secret and Google, and serves as an adviser to Girls Who Code, the nonprofit working to boost the number of women in tech. Bodnar herself helped to start a chapter of the organization at her school in Piedmont, Calif.
“The rising industry leader and promising young student sat down at Samovar Tea Lounge in San Francisco to discuss the challenges women face in tech, how they can persevere despite those challenges and why the industry must take steps to become more inclusive.”
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