With the leaders out, where is Instagram headed?

Instagram remains one of the most popular social media apps on the planet. With the combination of filters that make people feel like amateur photographers to the thrill of photo-documenting your life, Instagram has become the go-to social feed to find the people you want.

As Instagram has evolved (after the purchasing from Facebook) in to an all-in-one spot for those with a social appetite. They have added Stories that has dominated Snapchat where the idea originated, videos, discover, and soon, they will also be adding dating. In that time, they also launched Direct to be used as a direct messaging platform to compete with the WhatsApps and, oddly enough, the Facebook Messengers. Despite the continued evolution, it has stayed true to its core due to, seemingly, one thing: the presence of the founders after the acquisition.

That is all about to change.

Announced yesterday, the original founders of Instagram, that have stayed on after the purchase by Zuckerberg and Co. will be leaving, and we are all left to wonder what that means for the social media giant. Well, let’s take a look at what Facebook has done with their own apps under their design direction.

Facebook, the app, in all its glory, has become a titan of the tech world, While numbers decline, it remains the leader of the pack in features, users, and disaster. Everything from stories to dating to games to news are now included in the app to the point that it has no clear direction. Dating is now being spun off, the games are disappearing on the platform, and the news was hijacked by Russians. Not exactly a good record.

As for Messenger, the spun-off messaging app, it has become a bloated nightmare. A once-promising proprietary messaging system is now loaded with stickers, bots, colors, bubbles, et cetera that have bogged the app down so much that more people are using the stripped-down Lite version than the regular (myself included).

People are right to be slightly concerned about the future of the (arguably) the best social experience in the world. Facebook does have a history of taking something exciting, cool, and entertaining and packing it so rich in new features that it becomes unusable. Is that the future for Instagram? Maybe. Maybe Mark has learned a lesson, and can see the desire for Instagram to remain in its glorious state. However, the introduction of Direct (under the Facebook direction) makes me worry that Instagram is on its way to the same problem as Facebook: way too much everything.