Not everyone is happy with Instagram's new wordmark

Instagram or Instagzam?

The Instagram wordmark — or the text-only logo — that appears at the top of the app is changing for the first time in 10 years, platform head Adam Mosseri announced on Thursday.

The new one uses a heavier, more rigid font, in contrast to the old wordmark's more cursive style.

"It was time for a refresh," he wrote on both Instagram and Threads. "Cleaner and more modern, with references to the original and the simplicity and craft that's always made it Instagram."

It comes as part of a larger brand identity update that parent company Meta called a "forward-looking evolution that honours our roots."

But not everyone felt the same, as per this headline on the tech news site Engadget: "Use this space to roast the new Instagram logo."

Users online lamented the change.

"These decision-makers at Meta … must have absolutely no care for quality work," one X user said.

"The world will start healing now," sneered another, "from all things meta has done wrong to humanity. Exactly what 7 to 8 billion people were waiting for."

'Instagzam'?

The last time the wordmark was changed was in 2016. That update kept the cursive lettering once distinctive to the platform.

The new iteration is a more minimal, cursive-print hybrid. Some users pointed out that the cursive "r" looks a bit like a "z."

"The new Instagzam logo isn't bad," one user joked.

"RAM so expensive they rebranded to Instagzam," said another, referring to the surge in the cost of memory chips (known as random access memory or RAM), largely due to AI demand.

Other branded accounts joined in on the action, mockingly "announcing" their own brand updates.

All that aside, Instagram continues to be one of Meta's most popular apps, reaching two billion daily users in its last quarter. For context, by some estimates, competitor TikTok has just over one billion daily active users. (Its parent company, ByteDance, doesn't officially publish the figures itself.)

It's not the first time Instagram has pushed out a controversial update. A recently announced feature allowing users to generate AI images from public posts appears to have been killed within a week. And it has been accused of poaching features from other platforms, with some users comparing its new "Instants" feature with the app BeReal, whose popularity was short lived.

WATCH | Backlash, and an about-face:Even Instagram Stories, now a staple of the platform, was decried back in the day — by which we mean 2016 — as a copy of competitor Snapchat.

The responses on Mosseri's post announcing the new wordmark were largely positive, with many calling the update fresh, timeless and beautiful. Notably, he has limited comments on his account, meaning not everyone can leave a reply.