Announcing Instagram Profiles on the Web

http://blog.instagram.com/post/35068144047/announcing-instagram-profiles-on-the-web

by hornokplease • 14 years ago

114 64 14 years ago

blog.instagram.com

cjstewart88• 14 years ago

Why don't numbers have commas?

barredo3• 14 years ago

I wonder the same thing about youtube views count

lleims• 14 years ago

I do see commas on YouTube's views count.

uhwuggawuh• 14 years ago

Because some places, like Europe, use the comma symbol as the decimal point, so pi would be 3,14159...

chris_p3• 14 years ago

That doesn't make sense. Everybody knows that the number of views a post has is an integer, it doesn't really cause that much of a confusion for anyone. Most europeans are used to it.

What they should do is display the right separating symbol depending on the user's location.

chucknelson• 14 years ago

These look nice. I assume it's only a matter of time before these are encapsulated in Facebook?

citricsquid• 14 years ago

    Web profiles will launch to all Instagram users in the 
    next week or so. If you can’t see your profile yet, rest 
    assured that you’ll see it in the next few days.

Can anyone explain why this might be (the delayed roll out)?

ErikHuisman• 14 years ago

At Facebook they first release to a small percentage of users. They test and fix bugs. If all is fine and dandy they increase it step by step until the feature is live for everyone.

Tech talk on fb release strategies https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10100259101684977...

barredo3• 14 years ago

To fix bugs, to test performance and avoid an massive traffic hit to their servers

yllus• 14 years ago

Alternate title: "Announcing the serious Facebook competitor that could have been."

barredo3• 14 years ago

It only competes with Facebook with one feature.

duck• 14 years ago

Yes, but you could argue it is the killer feature of Facebook.

crugej• 14 years ago

Very interesting. Begs the question to whether facebook plans to disrupt itself with the Instagram acquisition somewhere down the line.

denzil_correa• 14 years ago

Did Facebook bring about this change? Interesting.

nsns• 14 years ago

There are already several 3rd parties on the web offering this service (e.g., web.stagram.com, statigr.am), wonder how they'll take this.

jonknee• 14 years ago

They'll go away. I wouldn't be surprised to see a TOS change soon to ensure that.

iamben3• 14 years ago

Just posted the same thing on the other thread. Poor guys. I suspect this will butcher their traffic.

acdha2• 14 years ago

It's an incredibly obvious direction for Instagram to expand in so I'd hope they had some plan for this

terhechte3• 14 years ago

That's the danger that you get when your main product lives of someone else's main product. I'm the author of InstaDesk, an Instagram client for the Mac, and I've also always assumed that this day would come. This will probably affect me too, but not as hard as web.stagram and the like, since I'm offering several "pro" features that will probably never make it to the Instagram website. My next release will allow the users to use "comment reply" templates, see which comments they've already replied to, download images for specific tags, etc, and much more. All more suited to people who use Instagram to connect to huge audiences (people with several thousand followers, etc). In the worst case, I'll need to raise prices to account for a smaller niche market. But let's see, it may also result in more Instagram users since it will be easier now to "experience" the network.

I also hope they finally allow user registration on the web. Currently, users can only register from within the iPhone or Android app, which makes it difficult for people to just register in order to follow a couple of friends.

But yeah, since I've kinda expected this to happen at some point, I've been busy in the past months to work on two separate products, that are slowly nearing completion.

timdorr• 14 years ago

This is only a single user's profile and stream of photos. Those websites offer web-based Instagram clients, which includes things like your incoming photo stream and the popular lists. Until they replicate those features on the web as well, then they'll still need to exist.

timfletcher2• 14 years ago

In the case of my app, monogr.am, we provide a custom designed gallery with options to choose any images from your feed. We have custom domains etc. I don't see this as a competitor at all for our market - people who really put time and effort into their images.

Instagram's really just showing your latest photos online and a few curated ones at the top. The user has no control at all over which images are shown.

pestaa• 14 years ago

Not so long ago IIRC Twitter closed the gates before orthogonal consumers (i.e. they were not competitors either).

I wouldn't be surprised much if Instagram/Facebook used similar tactics.

hnriot2• 14 years ago

Considering yours is a paid service, I would hope you're already thinking of something else, because im sure the FB TOS will block you and besides, if someone wants a customizable free version then they just use tumblr with one of the millions of these (or make one by hand)

If your product service offered a channel from instagram to tumblr and it didn't violate the TOS for FB then your product might have a future, but likely only as a free offering.

elliottkember• 14 years ago

Why didn't they just buy http://instagre.at?

malandrew• 14 years ago

AFAICT it is because Facebook now has a "not invented here" culture. They only products they have bought and kept in some form, they have bought for the users (Beluga & Instagram). Every company they acquired that had a product, but few users was a simple acquihire.

ceejayoz2• 14 years ago

Why would they need to for what amounts to a simple gallery view?

chris_p3• 14 years ago

It's interesting how the Instagram profile pages look kinda like facebook's. The cover photo, the layout and the way everything is arranged.

elorant2• 14 years ago

Next thing they'll add a bit sharing/voting and there goes Pinterest.

ry0ohki• 14 years ago

I think it's more of a final nail in the Flickr coffin. Pinterest is a completely different vertical (it's not even pictures necessarily, it's lots of random stuff on the web)

elorant2• 14 years ago

Or it could be a wake up call for Flickr.

ceejayoz2• 14 years ago

I really doubt a service that crops your images to squares at a low maximum resolution is going to compete with Flickr.

dustyreagan• 14 years ago

Maybe I'm just set in my ways, but I still love flickr. It's how I store my photos online. I certainly don't want to store my photos on Instagram. Though, flickr has missed an opportunity for the way people share spontaneous iPhone pics. A lot of people still use a real camera and upload their pics in batches.

state• 14 years ago

The aesthetic similarity to Facebook is pretty striking. Now you really can see why Instagram was bought, and where it's headed.

aes256• 14 years ago

My initial thought was "Wow, they really ripped off Facebook. How can they get away with this?"

Then I remembered...

runemadsen• 14 years ago

I wonder if they are going to flip the "facebook photos is now instagram" switch some time soon?

natesm• 14 years ago

The Facebook Camera app still hasn't been updated for the iPhone 5. Too bad, because it's an incredible app, much nicer than Instagram (which isn't horrible or anything).

veemjeem• 14 years ago

The aesthetics are similar to Facebook probably because they're sharing the exact same design team.

rbranson2• 14 years ago

Wrong. The designer of web profiles (Maykel Loomans) joined Instagram before the acquisition and this has been in the works for many months.

kmfrk• 14 years ago

You might take this as an opportunity to disable Instagram access to some of the apps made redundant by this new feature: https://instagram.com/accounts/manage_access.

bravoyankee• 14 years ago

Hmm. Very pinteresting.

fosk• 14 years ago

It's hard to say if you're not into it, but I wouldn't have sold.

padraigm• 14 years ago

I don't know, at the time almost everyone way saying they got way more than they were worth. If this were a field with a lot of room for further innovation, I'd tend to agree with you, but social photo sharing? Take the $1B and move on to the next project.

benschwarz• 14 years ago

I think this was really needed… you only need to look at the various sites web.stagram.com, pictajam.com, instaprof.appspot.com, ink361.com and more to know that people really wanted this.

Great, however — there is no way to take your photos with you without using the API (and thusly, oauth).

I was really hoping for an RSS/Atom feed, or a JSON endpoint that didn't require auth.

Do you think this is an oversight on instagrams' part, or was I just misguided in my hopes?

8ig8• 14 years ago

Wishfully, as I scrolled, I was hoping for: "To opt out of profiles..."

This may be great. I'd just rather take a wait-and-see approach.

loceng• 14 years ago

Facebook owns them. I imagine even if they provide this option for you, it will be opt-out, and they will opt you back in when they feel like it..

rbranson2• 14 years ago

"Who can see my web profile?

If your photos are set to public, anyone will be able to see your profile by visiting instagram.com/[your username] on the web. You do not have to be an Instagram user to view a public user’s profile on the web.

If your photos are set to private, your photos will be visible only to logged-in Instagram users you’ve allowed to follow you."

rxooo• 14 years ago

All I have to say is, About Fucking Time. How did they not have this feature before?

sohlis• 14 years ago

They should probably find a way to make Emojis work

davecyen• 14 years ago

I'm surprised they didn't bake a deeper integration with Facebook profile and photos instead of making Instagram more Facebook-like with potentially competing features. As a user I do think this is the right approach to keep both services running as separate networks, but in the long term I'm not sure if operating as independent kingdoms will be sustainable if they continue to merge closer in features. Facebook Camera now offers filters, Instagram now has profiles in browser... Maybe its own news feed next? Not to mention profile and news feed fatigue that could hurt engagement for both...

But that's all cynical speculation, congrats to FB and Instagram for not killing off Instagram. My gut says that's the right decision.

nicktal• 14 years ago

this is really...safe (and boring). there are a myriad of more interesting ways mobile photos could be arranged and displayed. perhaps geo-tagged? people? instead a grid. temporally arranged. that looks like my fb profile. yawn.

vinayan3• 14 years ago

I write a crawler for stats related to instagram profiles. This will make life much easier because soon enough all the other web profiles for Instagram will become less popular.

Announcing Instagram Profiles on the Web

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