It’s joyful to give. But for people who want to take advantage of you, you’re kind of an easy mark. —Larry King
Fashion has had a love affair with Instagram the past few years, but the app may have just killed the reason it was so popular with designers
Instagram, the photo-sharing app that has made models out of ordinary people and created a whole new fascination with photo filters, may have just killed its primary advantage for fashion labels.
For the past several seasons, fashion PR folk have seen posting photos to Instagram as being the next best thing to live streaming, and a hell  of a lot cheaper. From streetstyle to behind the scenes and, in many cases such as this season’s Saint Laurent show in Paris, the actual presentation itself, labels have taken advantage of the large audiences and real-time posting to communicate and share pictures with an adoring public. Instagram has been a critical part of creating excitement around brands and getting information about new styles pushed out to consumers in ways that traditional advertising can’t equal.
That may all come to an end soon, though, as Instagram, like Twitter and Facebook before it, moves from a chronologically based timeline to one that attempts to guess what each user likes the most. The concept is that most users miss the vast majority of what’s in their feed by not being on the app when the new material is posted. By using an algorithm that considers what one has liked, with whom they communicate, and what their previous activity has been, Instagram hopes to provide users with a feed that more accurately reflects their actual interest. For users, it sounds like a good idea.
As an article in Business of Fashion explains this morning, fashion brands and retailers may not see the move as an advantage, though. At the very least, they are going to have to reconsider and perhaps revamp how they utilize the app. If users are looking for real-time content, they may have difficulty finding it. During those times of year when multiple designers are releasing tons of new photos onto Instagram at the same time, finding the feed for the brand one wants may be almost impossible. So much for there being an advantage to the app!
If fashion labels can’t get the bang off Instagram to which they’ve grown accustomed, they’re likely to drop the app quickly. There are many others who have been looking to snatch up that fashion week business, specifically Snapchat and Periscope, both of which can provide real-time streaming without the expense incurred with major production costs. Already, during the past two seasons we’ve seen several brands replace high-dollar streaming with an intern holding an iPhone. If they lose the primary advantage of using Instagram, why would they continue?
Obviously, fashion is but a part of an immense network on Instagram, but the ripple effect could be significant. One of the apps big draws is for perspective models to take a chance at being discovered by an ad agency, modeling firm, or fashion label. With the real-time factor removed, none of those industries are as likely to see new models as quickly, if at all, based upon how Instagram interprets the brand’s interest.
There’s a lot at stake here and I’m not sure the folks at Instagram thought through the decision all that well. Be sure, fashion PR people will be giving their whole Instagram campaigns a second look now. Without the real-time advantage, other live apps start to look a lot better.
Snapchat Is A Portal To Hell
The information you get from social media is not a substitute for academic discipline at all.—Bill Nye
The fact that we cannot be separated from our phones is disturbing enough, but to not use them the way we want is criminal
Look at the string of icons at the top of this page and one should understand that I am not shy to using social media. I have Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Skype, and Instagram all set up and at the ready anytime I feel their use to be justified. As with many websites, Facebook is responsible for most of the visitors coming to this page, with Twitter coming in second on most days. I have other apps just for social media on my phone, including Vine and Periscope and Yelp. Perhaps most importantly at this particular moment, I have the NYFW app that allows me to view fashion shows even when I’m stuck in traffic. Yay me, I  am so connected [insert eye roll here].
Yesterday, I received an email (you remember those, don’t you?) from my favorite editor at Pattern asking, “I’d love to figure out a way to use the reviews and the photos cross-platform…like on snapchat…do you know anything about creating graphics and uploading text to snapchat?”
Snapchat. There’s an app I wasn’t expecting to need. Instagram, sure. I know exactly how to work that one cross-platform. Pinterest? Not a problem; we can do that. But Snapchat? I don’t have a freaking clue, and with good reason: Snapchat is for teenagers.
Okay, so there’s no age filter on Snapchat that limits who can use it. Still, there are several apps on the market that are primarily the domain of teens and/or college students and I feel no compulsion to pretend I’m part of that group by downloading an app I’ll likely never use. Still, I told the editor I’d take a look. Having done so this morning, I can only come to one possible conclusion:
Snapchat is a portal directly to hell.
I should have known this app was going to be trouble when I first saw its logo. What is that thing? Is it a ghost? The soul of lost Snapchat users? A depiction of what your brain becomes after hours of Snapchatting? An unidentifiable GOP Presidential candidate? I should know better than to download an app whose logo I can’t dissect.
Next, as I go to download the app, a window pops up on my phone telling me all the things this app is going to access. My friends lists. My contacts. My location. My current physical position. The last five songs I’ve listened to on Spotify. My blood pressure (which is suddenly very high). My last doctor’s appointment. The list was so long I had to scroll. This can’t be good, can it? I have a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach, but I promised I would take a look at the app and the only way to do that is to install it. Fortunately, my firstborn is already spoken for.
Upon completing the installation, one has to create an account. Immediately, I see another red flag: it won’t accept my full name. I’m still mad at Twitter for having dropped the final “r” from my name. I don’t like apps that won’t let me use my whole name because it’s dehumanizing. Not giving me space for my full name tells me they had lazy developers who didn’t want to create a database cell of sufficient size. Â I feel as though a portion of my soul is being stripped away from me as I create my new account name: c.letbetter. Sigh. Do you realize how many c.letbetters there are in this world?
Once my account is set up, with both email and phone confirmation, Snapchat then asks me to create a profile picture. Now, normally, this isn’t a problem. I have a set of images sized specifically for social media profiles. After all, I’ve done this enough we should be experienced, right? No. This is Snapchat. There’s no warning what is about to happen. There’s no option to upload your own picture. No, you press a button, the app counts down from three and then this happens (warning: those with weak stomachs  or heart conditions may want to scroll down very rapidly):
The most frightening thing I’ve seen in a long time.
Mind you, there is no option for editing out the bags under my eyes. There is no filter available. No, you just get a picture of me at 4:00 AM. At least, it should keep small children from accidentally adding me. We can only hope.
Next, they tell you that everything you do on Snapchat is in the moment. There’s no saving it for later. There’s no keeping it as a reference for what someone said or did. You create the Snapchat, someone sees it, and it’s gone. Hellooooooo trouble. This is probably why only teenagers use this damn thing; they’re not old enough yet to understand the need to save correspondence, even when it seems trivial at the moment. Snapchat opens the door to he-said-she-said arguments that are unsolvable because the whole record of the exchange is deleted. Sure, someone could always take a screenshot, but then faking a screenshot is rather easy.
Without evidence of any content, the door is open for all manner of malfeasance. One might share top secret information. An Apple employee in Ireland could let a hacker see their login info (for which hackers are paying a reported $10K). Vermin could run for President (oops, that one already happened). Your girlfriend could accidentally send nude pics to your mother. Just think of the horrors that could ensue!
Of course, all that is assuming that people add you. One cannot send a Snapchat to those who have not added them. Still, the more I’m reading about Snapchat hacking, the more I question just how insecure the whole platform may be.
There’s no question in my mind now that Snapchat is a portal to hell. And I still don’t have a clue how to cross-promote with it. NYFW starts tomorrow. Contact me the old fashioned way if you know how to solve this problem.
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