Instagram is doing away with a requirement that photos and videos uploaded to the app be cropped into squares, a move that appeases frustrated users but removes some of the simplicity that made it special.
Starting Thursday, Instagram is giving users the option to display their photos in landscape and portrait orientations, too. That’ll be a big change for the hugely popular image-sharing app. Instagram, bought by Facebook for $1 billion in 2012, claims 300 million users and about 70 million photo uploads a day on average.
When co-founder Kevin Systrom started designing Instagram more than five years ago, older-style, square-shooting cameras such as Polaroids and the Holga he used as a college student inspired him.