‘It turns out that nearly one in five photos or videos people post aren’t in the square format,’ admits Facebook subsidiary, with eye on video ads

Instagram built its community of 300 million users around a simple rule: every photo or video that they shared using its app would be square. Now the Facebook subsidiary is ditching that policy.

The app’s latest update introduces portrait and landscape options for both photos and videos, in a move that may be aimed at encouraging more brands to run video advertisements on Instagram.

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“At Stanford, Systrom opted to go abroad to Florence, Italy, for the winter term of his junior year, where he focused on photography. A teacher there persuaded him to switch from his Nikon to a plastic Holga that took square photos, a choice that would be echoed later at Instagram. Florence also marked Systrom’s introduction to using chemicals in the developing process, such as selenium toning, which can give photos a distinct purple hue.”

“We realised that if we were going to do photos, that we’d have to be different and stand out. Square photos displayed really well in a feed format and frankly we just liked the aspect ratio better. It wasn’t much more complex than that.”