What Porch understood, which everyone else eventually would, was that Instagram’s power lay not in what was posted there, but in how those posts made people feel. Because there was no re-sharing on Instagram, it wasn’t about news and information—it was about individuals, and what they wanted to present to the world, and whether others thought they were interesting or creative or beautiful or valuable. Pretty pictures were just tools on Instagram in the pursuit of being understood and validated by the rest of society, through likes and comments and even money, giving users a small slice of
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