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girlwonder28's review against another edition
4.0
Great read! I was engrossed the entire read. It’s crazy to see how decisions at Facebook/Instagram affect users (myself included!) and how the founders’ original intentions have been skewed or changed. I love the background and different perspective this book provided to an application I use daily.
nadiranieth's review against another edition
1.0
I don't know why people like this book so much. It gets boring after Facebook bought it. Sooo boring.
cal337's review against another edition
5.0
No Filter gets the tech side of this story right, realistically depicting the scrappy hacky early startup days to the product thinking of executives at large public companies. Like the majority of the internet-enabled world, I've experienced the evolution of Instagram and Facebook first hand, and subconsciously developed my own user behavior around them. But I hadn't ever connected the dots between their intertwined growths and changes. Essentially, Facebook used to be fun, but after it became public and shareholder demand increased, Zuckerberg grew growth-obsessed and shaped Facebook from a place of personal sharing to an attention-grabbing revenue machine. Instagram remained aside from that for so long, largely due to the driven vision of their founders according to Frier, but ultimately capitulated as well.
The book doesn't really get into the human side of the story enough. There are plenty of anecdotes of celebrities and influencers using Instagram, but we don't really get to know the personalities of the founders. I kept getting Systrom and Krieger confused because the book lacks dialogue, and the names never feel like true characters.
The book doesn't really get into the human side of the story enough. There are plenty of anecdotes of celebrities and influencers using Instagram, but we don't really get to know the personalities of the founders. I kept getting Systrom and Krieger confused because the book lacks dialogue, and the names never feel like true characters.
amarettto's review against another edition
5.0
This was a really good read, and very insightful into how Instagram became what it is today. As someone who works in Tech, and is watching engineers and leaders around me flock to work for Meta for the high pays, I can't help but read this book and wonder if everyone realizes what kind of culture exists across the company in general, and how their CEO willingly jeopardized the growth of a company he acquired, simply out of jealousy.
Instagram started out with a clear vision, and I'm impressed that the two founders stood their ground about what that vision was throughout their time in that role, even post-acquisition. From an engineer's perspective, the challenges they ran into when Instagram was forced to scale way faster than they were ready was really interesting (physical capacity challenges as well as abuse/spam filtering). It is also interesting to see that the kind of social problems that were born out of its success such as the rise of self-esteem issues among teenagers and young adults, 'influencing' as a career prospect, and so on, seemed impossible to fathom at its very start. No one could've predicted that those would be the outcomes of what was seemingly an app aimed at creating aesthetics out of everyday things. It was the user base that ended up taking it just a bit too far, and creating the evils of social media.
I do wonder what Instagram's fate might have been had they never been acquired. It almost seems like integrating with Facebook slowed them down over the years rather than let the creativity around the app's future run unbridled. I guess aside from being impressed and fascinated at how the idea came to be and was taken off the ground, those are the basic emotions this book left me with - pity and mild frustration.
Instagram started out with a clear vision, and I'm impressed that the two founders stood their ground about what that vision was throughout their time in that role, even post-acquisition. From an engineer's perspective, the challenges they ran into when Instagram was forced to scale way faster than they were ready was really interesting (physical capacity challenges as well as abuse/spam filtering). It is also interesting to see that the kind of social problems that were born out of its success such as the rise of self-esteem issues among teenagers and young adults, 'influencing' as a career prospect, and so on, seemed impossible to fathom at its very start. No one could've predicted that those would be the outcomes of what was seemingly an app aimed at creating aesthetics out of everyday things. It was the user base that ended up taking it just a bit too far, and creating the evils of social media.
I do wonder what Instagram's fate might have been had they never been acquired. It almost seems like integrating with Facebook slowed them down over the years rather than let the creativity around the app's future run unbridled. I guess aside from being impressed and fascinated at how the idea came to be and was taken off the ground, those are the basic emotions this book left me with - pity and mild frustration.