We all love Instagram, Facebook’s wildly popular photo sharing service. I personally have been on a crusade to put the word “‘Gram” into our pop culture vocabulary (“I’m gonna ‘Gram that!”).
A major change was made this week: You no longer need the app for iOS or Android to see the photos of the people you follow.
Now, all you have to do is go to Instagram.com and login to see the photos the people you follow are ‘Gram-ing (is it catching on yet? No? I bet you thought “tweet” wasn’t going to be a thing, either). You’re also able to view your own photos by visiting Instagram.com/[Your User Name]. Example: Instagram.com/AndrewSims.
Here’s what your feed looks like, with the photos of people you follow
Here’s what your personal profile page looks like (this has been available for a few months)
This is great news for those with iPads or other tablets because you can finally view your Instagram feed the way it’s meant to be seen. Previously for iPad owners, you’d have to download the phone version of Instagram and stretch it to the size of your large screen. This was inconvenient because the photos would lose image quality upon app expansion.
This may be the closest we get to an iPad Instagram app for some time.
“Simply put, we’ve brought a simple, powerful, and beautiful Instagram browsing experience to the web,” Instagram wrote on their blog.
They continued, “We believe that you should be able to access Instagram on a variety of different devices, any of which may be convenient to you at a given moment – including your desktop computer or tablet. We do not offer the ability to upload from the web as Instagram is about producing photos on the go, in the real world, in realtime. On the other hand, Instagram for the web is focused on making the browsing experience a fast, simple and enjoyable one.”
The one issue with all of this? Instagram is no longer contained within the app world. One of the initial appeals of Instagram was that it was only available to those of us tech-savvy enough to download the app. Now, unless your account is set to private, anyone can visit your Instagram profile through the web browser. It’s probably only a matter of time until your Instagram photos start showing up in Google, too.
For those of us with parents who like to browse our internet presence, this is a sad day. Mom, don’t judge me and my ‘Grams!
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