No Filter
(Note: original review was written some time in September 2022, and the current review has been revised and updated on the date of publishing)
No filter is a simple book. Not too complicated, easy to read, yet so informative — a joy for a reader who enjoys origin stories of companies, especially Silicon Valley start-ups! It makes me wonder if simplicity of this nature is easy to achieve — I think not, and Sarah Frier, the author of this fantastic book, has managed to ace at it!
No Filter is a behind-the-scenes account of the birth of Instagram, its path to popularity, acquisition by Facebook and the fate of the company there on. It is exceptionally fascinating to read about the origins story of a company, an app rather, that has arguably single-handedly (more or less) changed the social behaviour of most people on the planet — the ones with smartphones. Founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Kreiger originally started the app for artists and the creative bohemians to showcase their works but it did not take time for the everyday people to get obsessed with the concept of “aesthetics” and clicking “pretty” pictures of food and cafes masked with a glazed “filter”. What helped the app gain popularity in its early were its famous early adopters who in today’s words would be called the OG “influencers”. Like Jack Dorsey (there is an interesting story arc of how he was involved with Instagram and at one point wanted Twitter to acquire it), Kim Kardashian and the on-off couple Justin Beiber and Selena Gomez (plenty of interesting trivia here as well!). While YouTube may have been responsible for the birth of original “influencers”, it is Instagram that actually made it mainstream leading to the Creator Economy, and now of course TikTok has got an entire generation (Gen Z) influencing.
While the book is no doubt very engaging, the highlight for me was my reading experience with this book — how enjoyable that was. And by reading experience, I mean “sitting on a couch reading the book, and then taking it to bed and falling asleep, waking up early morning or middle-of-the-night to switch the night lamp on and read a few more pages, going on a road trip and flipping through a chapter, settling on an arm-chair in an “instagrammable” airbnb pouring over the story while the folks outside poured whiskeys in their glasses” kind of an experience. The experience reminded me of my childhood. Of reading a book in leisure, savoring each and every page. Pausing in between to let my imagination fly and see the scenes draw up in the air. Put me in a very wistful mood.
As I read through the pages, I took a liking to the founder CEO of Instagram, Kevin Systrom, whom I found to be a bit different from some of the other Silicon Valley founders, or CEOs for that matter, I had read about. I was pleasantly surprised to read about his approach to things — what Instagram meant to them, what they wanted to focus on… and how they couldn’t. To me, he literally personified the famous quote from The Dark Knight, “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to become a villain”. He founded Instagram on his own terms, scaled it on his own terms, and left it on his terms. I believe it’s a knack to know when it’s your time to leave. Most people, and most often leaders, resist their departure — and a few are even scared to acknowledge that time’s about to be up, or that no amount of effort put in this direction is going to take them closer to their dreams. I don’t think that accepting the end of your stay is a weakness or an underestimation of your being. It’s a simple awareness of who you are, your circumstances and the cards dealt to you. It’s logical. The guy who so creatively founded a company, who so meticulously sought coaching and read up extensively on how to become a good CEO knew exactly when he needed to step down and stop being a CEO. Ironic? Perhaps. But if you ask me, I feel it is exactly that learning that enabled him to make that decision.
Not that I was not aware about the impact that Instagram has had on our lives but when I saw the evolution laid out, it was so very clear that “we live for the gram”. We take vacations for the gram. We drink coffee for the gram. To think of it, cafe owners started designing and advertising their spaces as being “instragammable”. Now, that is some cultural impact. And of course, it doesn’t stop there now — people are designing there spaces including their homes and workstations to be instagram-worthy. And amidst all of this, somewhere we have stopped living for our own happiness and found refuge in being performative about our actions and seeking validation from our “followers”. And this shift just happened gradually, and we did not even realize how our brains have gotten so deeply wired to these patterns.
What was interesting to note is that the founders of Instagram realized about some of the harmful impact that there app has had (e.g., over-use of the app, mental health, online bullying, live streams being misused, etc.), and were putting in efforts to make Instagram a positive experience for its community. They were making attempts to undo some of the damages they would have done to the society unknowingly by re-evaluating at every step and engaging deeply with their communities. They tried hard and they tried their best. But they had limitations. The big daddy AKA Facebook and the man leading it, Zuckerberg, had some other plans. Read the book to know more on this leg of Instagram’s journey — I for one enjoyed it because the story gets spicy from here! (FYI, the founder Kevin isn’t really that active on Instagram anymore. 😉)
P.S.: The book was released pre-pandemic and there’s been a major pivot of Instagram from then to now in terms of where it stands. Today, Instagram is a video-first platform vs a photo sharing app that it used to be. The focus on reels, the chatter about the unfair algorithms has been discussed enough on forums. With TikTok gaining immense popularity, and creators wanting to go platform-agnostic, there’s a lot to see how the game of social media will unfold and what it will mean for Instagram. And amidst of all this, all eyes still continue to be on Zuckerberg.
