

Pinstagram - earbitscom
http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2012/05/pinstagram/

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shashashasha
"We thought it would be hilarious to combine them because they are two of the
hottest and most valuable companies on the planet"

Sigh. Are we really that lodged inside of our own startup bubble?

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gnaritas
If by "we", you mean you valley people, then yes.

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pud
I see what you did there.

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mmahemoff
Not sure why people are so upset about this.

It's a pleasant mashup, nothing more, nothing less. Like sticking Craigslist
and Google Maps together. Not going to change the world, but useful to some
and a weekend project to show off. The developers themselves are tongue-in-
cheek about it, as you could tell from the name alone.

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wushupork
Pek (creator) here. Thanks. We didn't see this as world changing nor are we
claiming it is. For those of us who don't use Pinterest or Instagram, of
course this will not be useful, but I'm a heavy Instagrammer and was always
frustrated that there was no good web interface. I was pleasantly surprised to
find that I was actually solving my own problem when we made this as a joke.

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jdub
I've never logged in to Pinterest, but this is a mighty fine (and incredibly
unclunky) web UI for Instagram. Love it.

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dsrguru
That's actually really funny how throwing two of the hottest startups together
works so well. If they can pull off the "this is just a parody and we're not
going to make money" angle to avoid a trademark lawsuit, this might be telling
us a very similar message to those mashups of California Gurls and [random
other trashy pop song that fits the beat perfectly]---that a lot of the more
successful startups in the Valley are no longer marks of technological
innovation but rather schemes to get rich quick off of the public's inability
to sit still without pretty pictures or Farmville type games. I do hope enough
of SV is still heading in the SpaceX direction though.

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jack-r-abbit
Pinterest's "famous waterfall layout" makes me want to vomit into my own hat.
Am I alone here?

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uptown
I find it pretty effective for rapid consumption of content for which there's
no "lossiness" penalty. I can miss or skip images and there's little or no
consequence.

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jack-r-abbit
My brain processes things linearly, left to right, top to bottom. If I go left
to right on row 1 and then left to right on row 2, I do not expect to find
elements of row 1 hanging down into row 2. I don't mind tiles and I don't mind
liquid layouts that realign tiles depending on page width. But when nearly
every tile has a different height, it really messes with my brain. Even the
two column Facebook Timeline makes me angry. Both cause my eyes to scan the
page in a way that goes against what I've been doing for 30-some-odd-years
now.

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uptown
I agree with you on Facebook's Timeline. That UI doesn't work for me at all.

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pud
From the article, "Here’s a recipe for success: Take two of the hottest,
fastest-growing websites in the world and mash them together."

That's not a recipe for success. Perhaps a recipe for getting a Wired article.

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wushupork
I don't think we are claiming any sort of success here. Getting written up is
nice. Is it a successful company? No. Is it a successful "business" no, but
then again many companies here in the valley don't seem to be too worried
about making money. Was it a good way to spend a weekend? definitely.

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dclowd9901
Interesting that no one's really thought of approaching Instagram's lack of
web presence as an opportunity. I suppose it seemed like a bit of a foregone
conclusion, like it was one of those products where that solution would be
superfluous, but seeing all of the images in the waterfall layout makes a lot
of sense, more, arguably, than it does in Facebook or the Instagram app.

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Renaud
You don't have to look far to find similar services that are built on
Instagram's API:

* <http://instacanv.as>

* <http://statigr.am>

* <http://web.stagram.com/>

* <http://instagrid.me/>

* <http://instagre.at/>

Pinstagram may be new and interesting, but it's hardly the first one to tackle
Instagram's lack of web presence...

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dangrossman
The name seems like a trademark infringement suit waiting to happen.

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thwarted
This reveals two things:

1) There's not much unique about any given social site, what drives it is the
users and what they post. Sure, delicious is social around bookmarks, reddit
is social around links, pinterest is social around visual content, flickr is
social around photos, so they have their niche, but the "secret" sauce is the
users.

2) The layout, theme, or visual identity of a site is completely arbitrary.
There's reason to make it unique as part of branding and (minor)
differentiation, but they are just uniquely laid out views of the same (user
generated) content.

The ease at which sites can be re-skinned to look like another is the physical
manifestation of the "we are the X of Y" start-up meme.

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minouye
It's interesting to note the change in the tone of comments between a Show HN
post and this Wired article:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3919135>

Yes it's derivative, but it's a fun project that actually is pretty useful.
I've logged in a couple of times since I saw it first posted because the way
it presents Instagram images is quite engaging. I _rarely_ revisit any of the
Show HN projects. This one was an exception.

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jordo37
I'm not sure why there is so much hate for this today as well. To me it seems
like a fun simple project that actually manages to make something easier for
some people, namely view instagram on their desktop.

I'm curious if this partially comes out of some residual hate on HN for both
instagram and pinterest since they are booming at the moment.

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Johnyma22
famous waterfall interface of pinterest? Isn't it just jquery masonry?

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josefonseca
I recall from Economy 101: the economy is moved by incentives..

Incentives in a wanted area cause that area to prosper, taxation causes an
unwanted area to slow down.

If a sipmle photoshop-plugin-like application like Instagram is worth U$ 1
billion, then of course you are bound to see 250 clones/mashups/whatever by
thursday next week, because U$ 1 with nine zeroes is one heck of an incentive.

The question on my mind is: are these websites worth this? Is a photo sharing
app like tens of others out there worth this much? imgur is worth how many
billions if instagram is worth a billion?

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svtiger
Give these successes extra thought and you will see like I have that the
significance of these services is obvious in a non-obvious way.

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Renaud
The _Sign in with Instagram_ button doesn't work.

Makes me wonder if they actually got their Instagram API key revoked, the
Instagram's license terms at <http://instagr.am/developer/> clearly say: _You
cannot use the Instagram name in your application._

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imrehg
I can log in without any problem.

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sheraz
God this is getting tiring. So. Utterly. Tiring.

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gburt
You're going to get sued by not one, two, massive startups for violating their
trademarks...

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thomasfl
Brilliant! So many examples of innovative, clean and user friendly interaction
design the last days. First swiftype.com, dragondrop
(<https://shinyplasticbag.com/dragondrop/>) and now pinstagram.co.

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justindocanto
Verbiage criticism aside, This is actually pretty awesome.

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wushupork
Thanks. I'm glad you like it.

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tjpannu
Hi, what technology stack/frameworks did you guys use to build pinstagram?

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wushupork
I blogged about it here: [http://blog.pekpongpaet.com/2012/05/01/pinterest-
instagram-p...](http://blog.pekpongpaet.com/2012/05/01/pinterest-instagram-
pinstagram/)

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joepour
This is smart.

