I guess all of us in the industry are pretty familiar with the mobile-first development philosophy prevalent these days.
However, as mobile-optimized everything and not-so-plain-old-web just kinda seem to get closer and closer week by week, I’m not so sure that mobile only is a great strategy. Last I checked, Facebook had a website.
I’m talking, of course, about Instagram, the mobile social network based on photos. The official blurb is:
A fun & quirky way to share your life with friends through a series of pictures. Snap a photo, then choose a filter to transform the look and feel of the shot into a memory to keep around forever.
I’m really not sure about the “forever” part, and I don’t do a ton of filters … sorta preferring reality to be filtered by my perception of it rather than my machine-aided reinterpretation of it … but I love using Instagram. It’s a great way to take and share pix you snap throughout the day.
I’d just so dearly love to be able to have a place to point to online where all my Instagram photos live. And there ain’t no such animal.
You can do precisely 3 things on Instagram’s website.
One
You can visit the home page. Yay.
Two
You can visit an individual photo, lonely and proud in its isolation:
Three
You can click through to iTunes and download the app.
. . .
. . .
But actually, #3 is cheating because it’s not really on the Instagram website. So there’s only two things you can do.
So the question becomes: when is Instagram going to take all that wonderful, beautiful, socially-related content and post it online?
One would thing they are missing some opportunities here, even if they are mostly pre-revenue. And one would think they could provide a better user experience for Instagram devotees.
Agree?
I couldn’t agree more!