
Ask HN: Why are there so few features on Instagram's website? - wuliwong
I&#x27;ve posed this question to many people over the last couple years and I could sum up all the responses in a single sentence &quot;They want you to use their app.&quot;<p>That much seems clear but the question still stands as I don&#x27;t understand what benefit it is to Instagram to have users discouraged from using the browser interface. And why would they build a site at all if they didn&#x27;t want people to use it? It does not seem that they lack any front-end web engineering talent as the current site has been executed well. The site just lacks a lot of the functionality of the mobile app.
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jeffmould
I have no affiliation with Instagram other than a user, but I believe the
answer really is that simple, they want you to use their app. The purpose of
Instagram is to capture moments in time via photos on your mobile device and
share those photos with your friends and others. The app serves that function
eloquently so what advantage does the website give them? Users aren't
discouraged from using their site, but what Instagram does not want is users
to upload hundreds of images at once from the albums stored on their home
computer. Not having the ability via the website helps to prevent that user.
In addition, outside of uploading and altering images the website really is
not missing any other functionality compared to the app.

Why have a website at all you ask? My response would be why not have a
website? It's a place for their business as a whole to have a web presence.
Just because a product is mobile-centric, does not mean they can't have a
website. I think their website is perfect for the product. It is minimal, you
can search for users, see what others are posting, participate in the
comments, and like photos. The only piece I do wish they would allow you to do
is see who is following you and who you are following. But to be honest, I
rarely use the site at all. In fact the only time I will find myself using the
site is if I am on Facebook on my laptop and want to share a photo from
Instagram to my FB friends. Other than that it is the app all the way.

~~~
wuliwong
>The app serves that function eloquently so what advantage does the website
give them?

The advantage a website gives them is more users using their product more
often which means more money from their advertisements.

>Users aren't discouraged from using their site

My personal experience is that I am discouraged from using their site. When I
want to tag a user in a comment, or see who has liked a photo or look through
my list of followers I feel discouraged and I close the browser tab.

>what Instagram does not want is users to upload hundreds of images at once
from the albums stored on their home computer.

This is easily avoidable by just using their current UX of uploading pictures
in their mobile app. Namely, one at a time. Putting this into their website
wouldn't allow users an easy way of uploading 100's of images at once.

>outside of uploading and altering images the website really is not missing
any other functionality compared to the app.

There is a lot of missing functionality; tagging in comments, viewing the list
of people that liked a photo, viewing the list of a user's followers or who
they follow, messaging, sharing-editing-deleting photos you've posted, your
notifications and your activity stream.

You say this:

>I think their website is perfect for the product

and also this:

>But to be honest, I rarely use the site at all.

My interpretation of this is that your opinion is the perfect web product for
Instagram is one that people don't use. Which I guess brings us back to the
beginning question. :)

~~~
jeffmould
> The advantage a website gives them is more users using their product more
> often which means more money from their advertisements.

Not really. For example, Facebook has proven that more people are drawn to
mobile. While they may gain some new users, it is going to be negligible to
their current base. In addition, I would bet that those users find them and
signup via the web will be users who do not use the app.

> My personal experience is that I am discouraged from using their site. When
> I want to tag a user in a comment, or see who has liked a photo or look
> through my list of followers I feel discouraged and I close the browser tab.

This may be your experience, but I would bet that you are a minority in the
larger scheme of things.

> This is easily avoidable by just using their current UX of uploading
> pictures in their mobile app. Namely, one at a time. Putting this into their
> website wouldn't allow users an easy way of uploading 100's of images at
> once.

True. But the desktop is not their focus.

> My interpretation of this is that your opinion is the perfect web product
> for Instagram is one that people don't use. Which I guess brings us back to
> the beginning question. :)

No, my interpretation is that Instagram was not built as a web product. It was
built as a mobile product and the web is secondary to that. They are focused
on building the best product to meet their demand, and unfortunately for you
their demand is not on a browser-based solution.

Not to be rude but I think you are looking for a deeper reason why they don't
have a web app, when in reality the reason is simple. Again, the purpose of
Instagram was to capture photographic moments in time via your mobile device
and share those moments with others. They built a successful product around
that and to meet that need.

------
uptown
Sure - they could certainly make their website more feature-packed, but I
think they're wisely focused where their audience is going.

[http://cdn1.tnwcdn.com/wp-
content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/05/...](http://cdn1.tnwcdn.com/wp-
content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/05/Share-of-time-spent-consuming-media-Mobile-
Desktop_chartbuilder-1.png)

The vast majority of people's photos originate on mobile devices, and
consumption of those photos is also trending dramatically upward while desktop
consumption is trending down. I believe Facebook sees a future where all
interaction is mobile, be that phones or tablets, and they don't want to waste
resources building out something they know is destined to continue its decline
in relevance.

~~~
wuliwong
If I am understanding you correctly, you are saying it's not that they want
you to users to use their mobile app but the trend is towards mobile
consumption so they don't want to spend as much of their resources on the web?

~~~
uptown
They want you to use the app ... for both publishing and consumption.

------
hanniabu
I forget where I heard this but one reason I heard was to discourage the
posting of old pictures since chances are that pictures on your computer are
older than those on your phone. When you use the app, you're most likely
uploading pictures you recently took.

------
tedmiston
When Kevin and Mike started Instagram, they were trying to solve 3 problems
[1]:

1\. Mobile photos don't look great 2\. Uploads on mobile are slow 3\. Sharing
to multiple services without having to think about which app in advance

Using their app was the way to solve these problems.

So now those problems are solved, and they’ve moved into related spaces.
Layout, for example, came about because every other photo collage app either:
(1) had a terrible user experience or (2) was plastered with ads (or both).

And remember that before Instagram, they built Burbn, where they learned how
confusing feature overload was to consumers.

> While in San Francisco, Systrom and Mike Krieger built Burbn, a HTML 5
> check-in service, into a product that allowed users to do many things: check
> in to locations, make plans (future check-ins), earn points for hanging out
> with friends, post pictures, and much more. However, recalling their studies
> in Mayfield Fellows Program, Krieger and Systrom identified that Burbn
> contained too many features and the users did not want a complicated
> product. [2]

More than anything else, I think this drove them to focus on simple but great
UX and the app; and that's why they don't ship new experimental features as
much as, say Snapchat.

The Instagram web app is decent today, but this has changed radically in the
past year.

> “While Instagram.com is designed to be complementary to the mobile apps,
> it’s important to the global conversations that happen on Instagram,” an
> Instagram spokesperson said. [3]

In the time they idled on the desktop side, some good third party Instagram
web viewers were created: Iconosquare, Websta (Webstagram), and INK361 to name
a few. Their API access to Instagram was ad free.

But this all changed last week when Instagram announced killing off third
party viewers, by stealthily burying the lede in the context of one app that
was scraping passwords. [4][5] (They already have OAuth after all.)

So why all this backstory?

Because now they have 300M users they need to monetize.

They’re not killing off “malicious apps”; they’re reducing their competition
to have more control over the user experience so they can recapture
advertising money. Now the problems they’re solving are for businesses to
deliver relevant advertising to their user base [6]. When you’re in the app,
they control this whole experience (and the analytics around it). Less so on
the wild wild web in the land of ad and tracking blockers. That said, with
third-party web apps dying off, I think we’ll see the desktop web app continue
to grow and be invested in, though with ads.

P.S. I am a heavy Instagram user
([https://www.instagram.com/kicksopenminds/](https://www.instagram.com/kicksopenminds/)).

1:
[http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2735](http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2735)

2:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Systrom#Burbn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Systrom#Burbn)

3: [http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/20/instagram-brings-search-
to-...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/20/instagram-brings-search-to-the-web/)

4: [http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/17/9751574/instagram-app-
dev...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/17/9751574/instagram-app-developers-
api-restrictions-security-privacy)

5: [http://www.macrumors.com/2015/11/17/instagram-new-api-
change...](http://www.macrumors.com/2015/11/17/instagram-new-api-changes/)

6: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/thesba/2015/06/19/the-
monetizati...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/thesba/2015/06/19/the-monetization-
of-instagram/)

