Well I'd say that Instagram was yet another inflection point, where relationships with strangers returned in parasocial many-to-one form, in place of the one-on-one intimacy afforded by ICQ.
At the time of ICQ, chat programs were the sole means of discovering and connecting to people, and allowed people to connect to strangers based on location. I made real life friends, who I met in person on ICQ. I suppose this kind of connection might still happening on game servers and Discord servers, but certainly, it isn't the dominant mode.
As for Facebook being 'visual': Facebook in it's earlier incarnations was just status updates, and mobile phone cameras were still pretty clunky (or non-existant). Instagram took off because it's filters turned otherwise ugly low-fidelity photos into something appealing.
At the time of ICQ, chat programs were the sole means of discovering and connecting to people, and allowed people to connect to strangers based on location. I made real life friends, who I met in person on ICQ. I suppose this kind of connection might still happening on game servers and Discord servers, but certainly, it isn't the dominant mode.
As for Facebook being 'visual': Facebook in it's earlier incarnations was just status updates, and mobile phone cameras were still pretty clunky (or non-existant). Instagram took off because it's filters turned otherwise ugly low-fidelity photos into something appealing.