Instagram just abandoned the square

Please gather your family for the following announcement: The Instagram square is O-V-E-R:

Today, we’re excited to announce that — in addition to square posts — you can now share photos and videos in both portrait and landscape orientation on Instagram. Square format has been and always will be part of who we are. That said, the visual story you’re trying to tell should always come first, and we want to make it simple and fun for you to share moments just the way you want to. It turns out that nearly one in five photos or videos people post aren’t in the square format, and we know that it hasn’t been easy to share this type of content on Instagram: friends get cut out of group shots, the subject of your video feels cramped and you can’t capture the Golden Gate Bridge from end to end. Now, when choosing a photo or video, you can tap the format icon to adjust the orientation to portrait or landscape instead of square. Once you share the photo, the full-sized version of it will appear to all of your followers in feed in a beautiful, natural way. To keep the clean feel of your profile grid, your post will appear there as a center-cropped square.

There are a lot of shapes in this big world. You know them well: The triangle. The rectangle. The square. Branding gurus take advantage of our common visual memory, using familiar shapes, colors, and fonts to help us remember them forever — creepy and effective. But when brands change well-known options of their service, it can inspire everything from feelings of mild aesthetic discomfort to sheer terror.

Some Instagram users love the square so much, they refuse to use their new options:

But as @Pinot bravely points out, there’s still a safe haven for square-obsessed Luddites — and that’s Vine:

Life advice: Brands gonna brand — that’s what they do. Accept it. By offering new options, Instagram hopes to grow its user base. But now you have to deal with the consequences of Instagram changing your personal relationship to squares.