I’ve never understood the popularity of Instagram, which is a pretty terrible way to enjoy photos. But the service is slowly getting better. This week’s addition of slideshow support is a good example.
“Starting today, you can share multiple photos and videos in one post on Instagram,” an announcement on the Instagram Blo explains, as if the rest of the planet did offer this kind of functionality years ago. “Now, you can combine up to 10 photos and videos in one post and swipe through to see them all.”
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This would have been helpful to me about two weeks ago. Since last July, I’ve been backfilling my own Instagram account with photos from the past (culled via the ability of Google Photos to show you what happened on a particular day). February is a particularly busy time for this because the kids were always on vacation from school this month, and we traveled a lot. Being able to pack events—a day in Lisbon, Madrid, Killington, or whatever—into a single post would have been really nice.
Well, I can do it now.
“When uploading to your feed, you’ll see a new icon to select multiple photos and videos,” Instagram explains. “It’s easy to control exactly how your post will look. You can tap and hold to change the order, apply a filter to everything at once or edit one by one. These posts have a single caption and are square-only for now. On your profile grid, you’ll notice the first photo or video of your post has a little icon, which means there’s more to see.”
So this is neat, and I’ll use it. But boy does Instagram need some other obvious features. Like the ability to just swipe from photo to photo in your feed, and the ability to view photos in high-res or, God forbid, original HD/4K quality.
They’ll get there.
Feel free to follow me on Instagram if you’d like. I’ll be sticking with this service despite its issues.