The Instagram grid change and why it’ll happen again

Instagram changed the layout of the post grid from square to a 3:4 aspect ratio format on mobile. It remains the same for now in the web browser. Note that the reels tab was already this new ratio. 

The impact is that anyone who designed their content to fit Insta's square format, now has a messy looking profile / grid. It's clear that the platforms will continually make changes to fit whatever drives engagement and creatives are at the tail end of those changes. 

Insta's square grid has always been an outlier, a legacy layout from the early Insta days and never really worked well on mobile devices that have the 16:9 aspect ratio. 16:9 is an international standard and mobile cameras shoot in that ratio by default. 

Here's what the grid looks like in the browser.

The learning & the fediverse

The learning here is to create work in a format / ratio that suits your end game and also caters a little for the future, not for the platform. 

I create a lot of my images at 5-6000 pixels across. It's enough for most purposes and allows the work to be scaled down or cropped easily. If you're a Redbubble user, you'll be familiar with their one upload of the 6000 pixel upload that then generates all of the images for their various product merchandise. 

The fediverse is Meta's answer to making all public online content and conversations available across all of its platforms that you give it permission to access. It's important because what it means is that your online work / content is now (if you've turned it on) platform agnostic, Instagram users can see your threads content etc. 

It's not hard to imagine that the current platforms (Insta, Threads, Facebook etc) will all merge and become the Meta platform. So putting all of your effort into a single platform, is a risky long-term approach. 

Federated content

The little fediverse icon next to your name (the two circles, on Threads) is there indicating progress on federating your post to the network. It's posting it to the  server infrastructure and running all sorts of algorithms for it to find the right audience across all of Meta's platforms (Insta, Threads etc). 

Own your house

From a marketer's perspective, the best choice is always to own your house. Make your website and post the content there and share it out to the platforms. if you have the time and resources, there are benefits and necessary cases to posting direct on platforms such as TikTok (doesn't support URLs), but branding and actions should drive back to your home where possible. 

For the wanderlust travellers and those who post mainly on Instagram or TikTok, tips would be to make sure you save drafts of all of your media on your phone or lappie. You never know what will happen in the future, like the grid change, and you'll need to resize or repost. Save any edited content, reels etc that you've added copy, effects and all that editing time, onto your device. 

Let me know if you have thoughts on the grid change and what's coming in the future. 

Follow me on these platforms for more: threads, Insta, Facebook, TikTok