Pinstagram

"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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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

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

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.

Verbiage criticism aside, This is actually pretty awesome.

This is smart.