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Saturday, August 25, 2012

Instagram 3.0 Released – Brings Photo Maps, Infinite Scrolling and Redesigned User Profiles and Upload UI

Instagram seems like one of the most popular social networks along with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+.  It has managed to gather a huge following who is willing to take low resolution photos and stylise them with easy to use filters, frames and effects. It’s recent release on Android has just skyrocketed its user base and new users as well as celebrities keep on joining it. Not to forget, the $1 billion purchase by Facebook also helped its popularity.

The small but hugely talented Instragram team has been working on incremental but useful updates meanwhile. Most of the point updates are performance or bug releases but with version 3.0, Instagram has taken on the geolocation game which already contains the likes of Facebook and Foursquare as its leaders.  Here’s a walk through of the new features and updates in Instagram 3.0.

Photo Maps

This is the major new geolocation based feature. Photos with location information can now be shown on a map in every user’s profile. For privacy concerns, Instagram lets you chose which photos you want to show and hide from the map since all photos on a map can be seen by anyone who can see your profile. Instagram also shows a check box on each photo upload asking whether it should be added to the Photo Map or not.

On first access, Photo Map reminds of the privacy concerns.

Instagram 3 0 Photo Map Permissions

Photos can be selected/deselected to appear on the Photo Map. It’s always a good idea to chose wisely since you’re exposing you locations to the public.

Instagram 3 0 Photo Map Adding Images

Once images are added to the map, they can be seen as album stacks.

Instagram 3 0 Photo Map

Double tapping an image stack opens up its images in a thumbnail view.

Instagram 3 0 Photo Map Thumbnails

Here’s a video of Photo Maps

Redesigned User Profiles and Image Uploading

User profiles have gotten a nice facelift to accommodate the Photo Map button in the UI. Infinite scrolling is also included in the photo timelines, thought not an obvious feature unless you start scrolling down. This is a much needed addition to Instagram and reduces many extra steps to view photos.

Instagram 3 0 Profiles

Following the profiles, the image upload section has also been cleaned up and includes the Photo Map check box. Not much else has changed here apart from the design and layout.

Instagram 3 0 Upload Images

Other updates include the ability to mark comments as spam as well as delete them. The app also feels snappier in general usage.

Instagram 3.0 is available for both iOS and Android and can be downloaded right away.

Download Instagram for iOS from iTunes

Download Instagram for Android from Google Play Store



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