ISO50

So by now you’re all no doubt familiar with iPhone social photography app Instagram (which Alex recently “>reviewed) and if you’ve spent any time working with it you likely noticed a somewhat important omission: a web component. There is no official web interface for Instagram profiles; a user must explicitly “share” a photo and even then only that single image is viewable. There are no galleries or user profiles which makes it difficult to share your profile outside the spiked, aluminum-lined garden of iPhone land.

But now Japanese developer Joe Mio has create this missing web interface in Webstagram. The Webstagram site allows access to most of Instagram’s viewing features without the need for an iPhone or even Instagram itself. I’m wondering what Instagram think of all this. Webstagram apparently works by accessing the Instagram API, which would lead me to believe this behavior is sanctioned, at least tacitly. I wasn’t about to enter my Instagram user/pass to try out the logged in state of Webstagram, so I’ll leave it to someone a little more brave to figure out whether you can favorite things (apparently you can comment directly from Webstagram).

While useful and convenient, aesthetically, Webstagram disappoints. The Instagram experience is very branded and consistent. On the contrary, Webstagram sports a bare-bones interface that detracts from the overall cohesiveness and flow of browsing a feed. Here’s to hoping the Instagram guys whip up their own proper web interface with a little richer feature set and a cleaner design.

You can access my ISO50 Instagram feed at Webstagram or via @iso50 in the App.

Some Instagrams I’m following:

Cole Rise – @colerise
Joyce Su – @joycesu
Alex – @alexcornell
Beamer – @beamercola
Jakub – @heatheredpearls

Edit: There is an alternative web interface here, although I am not sure that you can reference a user’s feed directly via a url. Thanks Bramus for the link.

Webstagram via Joyce Su