Profolio

CONCEPT + UI

Instagram is highly accepted as the most used social media platform to showcase your product, talent, work or art and there are apps that make your posts look amazing. Instagram grids are a unique way to show your work but there's a problem...

A beautiful problem

Lately, profile grid layouts have been something people are doing to give their profiles a unique artsy edge. While these grids make for a beautiful profile, the individual photos don't show in the followers' feed in a way that makes sense. Instead they show up like this...

Algorithms don't help

Nothing on social media has been more harshly hated than Instagram's new ranking system. If your Instagram photos receive a lot of likes, they will be rated higher, then your photos will be "featured" and receive even more likes. If your photos receive only a handful of likes, they will be rated lower, possibly be "buried" and your photos will receive even fewer likes.
It's becoming harder for a casual user to have fun posting on the platform because their photos will always take a backseat to Kim K's photos. If Kim K posted a photo grid whose photos individually made no sense, each one would STILL get hundreds of thousands of likes and show at the top of everyone's feed...taking up space that could be used for other posts.

Splitting up likes

The likes for this photo grid has been divided into 9 photos. It's not surprising that the photo with the face got the most likes. One could only imagine how many likes this photo would've gotten has it wasn't broken up into 9. It probably would've gotten enough likes to actually show in someone's feed.

but Kim K still fiyah

Let's take a grid post from Kim K. All of the squares, even the non-descript ones that just show a blob of black hair, have gotten a significant amount of likes. According to the algorithm, you can guarantee all 12 of these photos will show in someone's feed for the simple fact that they have millions of likes for no reason.

So why care?

Because I like Kim K. But I don't need to see 12 of her photos on my feed especially if her face isn't in 11 of them. And this goes for anyone who posts grids of photos. Hopefully one day Instagram will bring back chronological order, and when they do, I will still have this issue of seeing back to back to back random photos from someone's grid...just in chronological order.

How might we give Instagram users the ability to create beautiful, stunning profile layouts without utilizing unneccessary feed space for other users?

Competitors

There are already plenty of apps out there that allow users to split their grids into 3, 6, 9 and 12 squares. These apps all have one thing in common. They tell the user to "Make sure each square looks good on it's own." That's a lot for a user to have to think about every time they want to post a grid.

Impact on likes

Instagram grids do make your pictures looks cool on profile pages but they are placed on your followers' feed as multiple parts of one image. Most of these image parts don't make sense and you start losing likes since your grid posts don't make sense individually. When you lose likes, the algorithm lessens your chances of showing up in someone's feed.

Profolio is, yes, another photo grid app that allows users to post large photos on their profile while taking up minimal space on their followers' feed.