Why is Instagram improving its desktop website?

As Facebook gathers its billionth user and beyond, it’s worth taking a look at what’s going on with its other pet project: Instagram.

A few days before Facebook made the one billion user announcement, my friend (lower case “f”) posted an Instagram photo to Facebook.

I wasn’t following him on Instagram, but when clicked through to his photo on the Instagram desktop website, I noticed I could begin following him on Instagram directly from there, as opposed to having to go into the iPhone app and search for his username.

It works for other users too.

The Instagram website, which used to be little more than a blog for the company and a mirror to the iPhone app, has steadily improved over the course of 2012, especially over the last few months.

It looks like Instagram added this follow-from-Web and other features – the ability to “Like” a post from the desktop site and comment (both when signed in) – in late June.

The Instagram mobile site has also gotten some of these changes, but still prominently tries to direct uses to the mobile app with an “Open in App” button on the upper-right hand corner of the site.

In July, there was that odd sighting of a “View Profile” option on the Instagram desktop site that led some to believe Instagram was working on a full web version of the app. For what it’s worth, you can already edit your profile settings via dekstop.

Really, all that’s left in order to complete the replication of the app on desktop web browsers is the ability to access one’s full account and scroll through a river of followed users’ photos.

My question is: Why is Instagram making all of these improvements lately?

Coming as they do in the wake of Facebook’s acquisition (finalized in September), the Instagram desktop web improvements seem to be going in the opposite direction that Facebook needs to go – i.e., improving its mobile apps, experiences and monetizations.

The whole point to Facebook buying Instagram was that Instagram understood and had succeeded in mobile in a way Facebook only dreamed of.

So again: Why would Facebook be using, or rather, greenlighting Instagram’s mobile engineering talent to improve the Instagram desktop experience when Facebook really needs to get its own mobile shit together?

I can think of a few plausible reasons:

1. Instagram is playing catch up

Instagram always (or for a while, anyway) meant to bolster its desktop website and just never got around to it until now.

2. Improving Facebook + Instagram desktop integration

In order to improve the integration between the two disparate social networks, someone thinks it’s necessary to improve Instagram’s desktop interface. Maybe a full fusion is coming, maybe not.

3. Instagram is practicing/getting ready to release a tablet experience

Instagram’s iOS app works on the iPad, but it isn’t formatted for tablets yet. As Instagram notes on its website: “We are currently working on making the iPhone and Android experiences as solid as possible. Only then will we consider other platforms, but currently we have nothing to announce.”

If you’re gearing up to release a tablet app or tablet-optimized website, there are worse ways to go than building by building a nice, full-feature HTML5 desktop Web version. (Although, as Zuckerberg recently conceded, HTML5 is still no match for native apps, at least where Facebook is concerned).

This would be particularly timely with the iPad Mini supposedly right around the corner. And with more and more 7-inch tablets hitting the market, a tablet Instagram app would seem more important than ever.

4. Instagram is getting ready to release another product.

A separate website, app or social network of some kind. Maybe a video-sharing one. Although in this case, we’d probably see no movement on the desktop website.

Either way, with Facebook’s one billion users and Instagram’s 100 million, how the two networks will play together and to what extent they unify will be defining for the social web in general. Look alive.