I’m not a fan of tightly gated internet communities. By ‘tightly gated’ I mean communities (ie social networks) that don’t provide public RSS feeds and also don’t let you view anyone’s content without being logged in yourself.
Instagram is one such gated community.
All my photos used to be publicly accessible
Before 2007 I didn’t publicly share many photos online. Those that I did, I uploaded as albums to this website – like my engagement and wedding photos.
Then in 2007 I joined Flickr and started posting all my photos there. Flickr was an excellent site, and I even had a paid account for several years.
My Flickr photostream from 2007
Instagram launched its Android app in April 2012, so a few months later I started posting photos there as well. During this period I cross-posted all my photos to both Instagram and Flickr.
Flickr stagnated, Instagram innovated
Unfortunately, Yahoo! pretty much stopped investing in Flickr. So, while Instagram was becoming increasingly easier and more fun to use, Flickr stayed where it was.
That’s why from 2017 I stopped cross-posting, and instead posted all my photos to Instagram only.
My Instagram photos from 2017
Facebook locked down Instagram
In the earlier days of Instagram you could still browse someone’s profile and look through all their photos without needing an Instagram account yourself. But, over time, Facebook made Instagram an increasingly tighter gated community.
Recognising this was happening, from the start of 2019 I started cross posting all my photos to this blog. That’s where we are now.
Diagram showing four timelines. Three of these are light grey in colour and are labeled ‘Flickr’ (2 Mar 2007 to 7 May 2017), ‘Instagram’ (8 Nov 2012 to 9 Apr 2019), and ‘Random tangent blog’ (1 Jan 2019 to now). One is orange in colour and is labeled ‘Instagram only’ (2017-2019).
Unlocking two years of ‘lost’ photos
What all this means is that I have almost two years’ worth of photos locked inside Instagram’s walled garden. This is what I’m now here to fix.
Over the next four posts I’ll re-share all my Instagram photos from 2017 and 2018 that are currently only available on that platform.
Here goes…