Is Instagram A Photo App? Or Is It A Platform?
One thing I find interesting about the Instagram story is how the app has blurred the lines between application and platform. The initial success enjoyed by the Instagram team seems pretty modest from here in 2012 … users take pictures, add a clever filter preset, and share the photo with friends and family members. Instagram did this very well, but there was more to come.
One gap in Instagram’s feature set is the lack of a web interface and community. One now wonders if this wasn’t by design, as Instagram users now enjoy support from a variety of third parties in this regard. There’s something comforting about having a variety of web interfaces from a variety of coders as we get to see several different takes on photo browsing.
Undersky is one such web portal into the Instagram community. Very clean presentation of popular images, your feed, and your own uploads.
The Webstagram “Instagram Web Viewer” provides a little more than Undersky, allowing the visitor to switch between list and grid views, view a photo of the day, what’s “hot,” and more. The site is operated on a shoestring budget and is occasionally down … but I admire the effort.
A little twist is provided by gramfeed (sic) is the display of a user’s avatar in the corner of Instagram photos … it would seem to make frequent posters a little easier to spot. A map-based location search is also provided; it seems to work quite well. Speaking of mapping, once you are logged into Instagram through gramfeed, a map figures prominently on the “My Feed” and “My Photos” pages. Try it … pretty fab.
Now for one of the prettiest ways to view your Instagram photos on the web: Insta-great! Presenting Instagram photos in a filmstrip metaphor makes exploring fun. Flipping through “Popular Photos” with your track pad or scroll wheel is entertaining and, when you find something compelling by another Instagram photographer, it’s easy to switch to their stream of images with just a click.
There have been others, but one big downside to dependence on third-party support for functionality is that they sometimes go away. Try one of the sites listed here … and Google for more.
More to come; I’m not done with Instagram … not yet.
