Since 2010, smartphone users have been editing square-shaped photos with unique filters inside an app and then posting them to a social network. We know this ubiquitous app and social network as Instagram.
Inside the app, Instagram does a specific number of things very well. But the company (owned by Facebook since 2012) has been painfully slow about bringing its distinctive experience to the world wide web. Currently you can view your photo stream on the web, and adjust your profile settings. That's about it.
While the day may never come that Instagram users will be able to edit-and-post images on the web, the company today took a big step forward in making the web experience more like its mobile cousin. As of today, you can search Instagram on the web.
Go to instagram.com and you'll find a search bar at the top center of the page. Start typing in a search term, and a drop-down menu gives you the option to choose between searching for hashtags, locations or users. You'll also find that locations and hashtags now have their own hub pages, which provide a three-column view of thumbnails. These landing pages will even tell you the exact number of photos that match your search term.
In the absence of web search, several third-party alternatives have popped up over the years, such as Websta and FindGram. But Instagram's proprietary search function could render those services defunct.
With Instagram's webpage embeds accounting for more than five billion impressions, the arrival of search on the desktop is no mere novelty; it's a necessity. Given Instagram's ever-growing popularity, the only surprise about this move is that it took so long to implement.
