Once upon a time it was quite elegant. Then, like everything Facebook acquires, it grew into a bloated "why not?" monster.

IMO, its elegance came from its simplicity. It did one thing and it did it well.

There is an ever growing demand for new features, not necessarily from users, to fend off rivals and to stay relevant and exciting. As with a lot of popular apps and services, it ends up bloated, trying to offer everything to everyone and satisfying no one.

Also when your salary is tied to feature development, bloated apps and poor UX is inevitable.

> It did one thing and it did it well.

Except it didn't, the photo quality on Instagram is really bad because of compression and it is not possible to share actual good pictures because of that.

That's not what it meant to do - it was supposed to make your crappy early-smartphone pictures look nice with its filters.

Gotta keep busy adding features to justify that head count.

Hey, those promotions aren't going to get themselves. You have to make sure your features get into production for your year-end review.

Instagram insists I'm a bot and immediately blocks any account I make. Using Instagram without an account is a rather dismal experience since it blocks viewing any posts, or scrolling too far through previews of posts. I also deal with businesses that post all their updates on Instagram.

User experience doesn't seem to be a priority for Instagram.

> rep for elegance

Back in 2013-2014 it was a quite simple to use and elegant app. Then Facebook happened.