Instagram Brings Photo Feeds to the Web After Two Years of Being Mobile-Centric

For the first two years of its young life, photo sharing darling Instagram focused primarily on delivering its service to smartphone users. Although demand would have likely been great, the company’s founders decided to hold off on a browser-based component in order to become one of the pioneers of mobile photo sharing.

After the service was acquired by Facebook in 2012, the decision makers apparently decided that their mobile dominance mission had been accomplished. Later that year, in November, Instagram rolled out web profiles. Now, one of the last major walls has come tumbling down: Instagram today announced that photo feeds are now available through the web.

Now, instead of being limited to browsing through a user’s photographs on a gallery-style page, you can browse your personal Instagram feed directly through the Instagram website, just like you do on your phone.

The experience of viewing the feed is very similar to what you get on your phone. You’re shown the latest pictures captured by people you follow, as well as updates when new photographs appear in the feed.

Just like with the phone app, you can “Like” a photograph simply by double clicking on them (it’s double tap on your phone). There’s also the standard inline commenting form for interacting with other users.

One neat feature of the web-based feed is that if you make your browser window narrow, the feed neatly collapses into a single-column format that closely resembles the mobile feed’s layout:

A notable feature that’s still missing from Instagram’s web front is the ability to upload photos to your account. Sadly, that may not be on the company’s roadmap at all. Founder and CEO Kevin Systrom writes that the web interface is solely for consuming the content rather than creating it,

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.

To get started with enjoying your feed through your browser, head on over to the Instagram website and log in with your credentials.

This latest development is yet another step toward the photo sharing industry converging upon the same product…