Unofficial Instagram web interface Followgram shuts down pending official API

Instagram is a great way to share photos and follow friends' photo posts if you have an iPhone. You can even share links to your individual photos on the web. Unfortunately, there's no web interface for sharing your Instagram photostream. That's where Followgram came in, until it was shut down this afternoon. Now this message has been posted:

Sorry folks, looks like we have to say goodbye for now.

We'll be back as soon as Instagram releases a public API. In the meantime keep snapping those Instagram photos.

Regards, The Followgram Team

In case you're not familiar, Followgram lets users share and tag their Instagram profiles, and search the profiles and photos of other users. It also has a "challenge" feature, where users can enter their photos in a weekly themed contest, and submitted photos are showcased in the Challenge tab of the site. What Followgram doesn't do is let you search every user and photo on Instragram -- only folks who sign up separately for Followgram are listed.

Instagram has already made plans to launch an official API and web interface, and the shutdown message at Followgram implies that they don't want third-party workarounds getting too big before the API is released. The temporary shutdown is probably good for everyone, because it saves Followgram from creating new features that will have to be rebuilt using the Instagram API, and gives the third-party site some time to distinguish itself from the official web interface. One way to do that would be by pushing the challenge feature and focusing on the community aspects of Followgram.

As a cool side-note, the Followgram tag cloud includes tags for Instagram's photo filters, so you can see which are the most popular. X-Pro II was the most popular just before Followgram shut down.

Tags: API, followgram, instagram, ios, photo sharing, photography, photos, PhotoSharing, shut down, ShutDown, web