Today, August 27, 2015, Instagram has unveiled a feature that should have come around a long time ago. A change that many have been asking for, for a very long time has finally come, pictures no longer have to be square! Recently when Instagram upgraded the resolution of pictures that could be posted many began to predict and hope that this would be the next change. Now at first this may not seem like a big deal because people had become so used to this and had started using applications to size their photos appropriately for them to fit on instagram. Although this was a decent workaround, it still ruined the look of pictures with those big ugly white borders around most pictures or half the picture being cropped off.

” Square format has been and always will be part of who we are. That said, the visual story you’re trying to tell should always come first, and we want to make it simple and fun for you to share moments just the way you want to. 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.”

As one of the fastest growing social media platforms, Instagram has just removed one of it’s biggest limitation that led to some people eventually giving up on Instagram. Those forgotten users will now return in masses, leading more businesses and advertisers to follow suit. Business will also be able to take advantage of this because let’s be honest, how often is the perfect picture you’re taking square? Well the same applies as a business but even more so in a business. Most of the time when you take a picture in business you are not thinking about Instagram (unless that is your job), many times the pictures are taken by a professional photographer and then the social media manager has to somehow find a picture that will look good square.

This is a screenshot of what Instagram says the new feature will look like.

Basically you can use most regular pictures taken and without any extra work just post them. You still have all the options of adding all the filters and nothing else has changed except the ability to post non-square pictures. As a regular user and a business user, I am very glad to see this change. What do you think?

Source: Instagram