Hipsters and iOS converts rejoice: your long period of expressionless suffering is almost over. The photo app that’s taken the Internet by storm and inspired dozens of beatings towards wannabe Ansel Adams of the world (unconfirmed) is coming to Android “very soon”, said Instagram executive Kevin Systrom. Android users have been clamoring for an official Android app since the photo sharing service began to surge in popularity last summer. There still isn’t any concrete date for the app’s release, though it was shown running on a Galaxy Nexus at SXSW in Autsin.

If you’re unfamiliar with Instagram, good for you. Essentially it’s a mobile-only photo sharing service, akin to Flickr and Twitter combined. Users take photos in an “artistic” 1:1 format, tweak them with some built-in tools and post them to the Instagram website, where they’re judged, lauded or dissed by a jury of the users’ oh-so-artistic friends. Quick sharing to Twitter and Facebook makes sure that no friend or family member is safe from the public displays of aesthetic crime.

Company representatives  said that the Android app was better than its long-standing iOS counterpart in many ways, though they didn’t elaborate on exactly how. If you’ve just got to get that Instagram experience and you can’t wait, most camera apps (including the default on Ice Cream Sandwich) include the same series of “artistic” filters and modifications, and (gasp!) can also post to Twitter and Facebook. So with a little ingenuity, you don’t need to wait for the developers to take advantage of a market 300 million users strong before annoying everyone in your social circle with poorly filtered shots of yourself in the bathroom mirror.

[via SlashGear – image from the hipsters at HicksDesign]

4 COMMENTS

  1. You’ve done a poor job of hiding your bitterness that this was an iOS-first social network. Can’t you just be happy that Android now has the developer mindshare for apps like this to make the jump, and for others like Path to launch on both platforms?

    This is an amazing time for software. Enjoy it, and stop beating everything you’re not a fan of with the hipster stick.

    • I wasn’t aware that I was hiding anything. My obvious distaste for Instagram has nothing to do with iOS. I just think that its arbitrary limitations are pointless, and that most of its users seem to think that throwing a couple of filters on an otherwise mundane snapshot makes them art-house photographers.

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