The photo sharing social network, bought by Facebook not so long ago has finally made the transition from mobile only to now include web interaction. At the time when Instagram was starting to really take off, industry analysts were asking if the way of mobile only app, was the way. Alot of fuss was made about how you don’t really need a web presence to have a service become used by millions, and has the way forward when it comes to launching something new. Now after two years when it first came to the iTunes app store, Facebook brings it back to the web with new user profiles rolling out slowly to the whole Instagram community over the coming week.

As Facebook is the owner, you well see instantly that it has had a hand in the design and look of the profiles; they are very much similar to Facebook’s own Timeline style. Changing photos in the main cover picture area, profile picture and the link to access more details about the user below that.

The privacy around this change will confuse some users. The settings are in common to Facebook’s, where public profiles and photos are visible to all browsing the site even if they are not logged in, and private photos only visible to logged in users and those who have permission to do so. Users will also be able to follow other users, comment & like photos and edit directly from the web. There is a current restriction in that no photos can be uploaded from the web but only from mobile devices as it is now. Your Instagram link is in the form instagram.com/[username], as an example, Nike’s would be instagram.com/Nike.