Pinstagram: why this Pinterest clone might actually succeed

Pinstagram is apparently real

There are many mock sites and clones of visual bookmarking site, Pinterest.com, but most are poised for failure, as being a copy of an existing service without offering anything special is a recipe for a flop.

As companies come out of the woodwork to attach themselves to the Pinterest cash cow and put their own spin on it, a two-person design and development team in San Francisco may have struck gold with their launch of Pinstagram, the product of their “self-imposed hackathon” that combined Pinterest and Instagram, which they say started out with a joke, but quickly developed into a viable creation.

Visitors to Pinstagram sign into Instagram, and their default feed of friends’ photos, their photos, favorites, and popular pictures, are all pulled together into a Pinterest-esque interface, giving Instagram photos a more meaningful web presence through a nod to Pinterest’s now famous tile design, allowing likes, comments, or the ability to pin the photos directly to Pinterest.

The Pinterest for Instagram

Co-creator Pek Pongpaet said¹, “I love using Instagram. The problem with Instagram however is their web experience is non-existent. I’ve been frustrated that the only way to consume Instagram is through my iPhone. Lately, Pinterest and Instagram have been getting a lot of press because of Instagram’s 1 billion dollar purchase by Facebook and Pinterest’s hypergrowth.”

Pongpaet added, “My cofounder Brandon and I were having a discussion on startup pitches, especially the ones that go “we’re an X for Y” and thought a hilarious VC pitch would be “we’re a Pinterest for Instagram”. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. I liked Instagram, and this was a real need for me. There was nothing like it out there that I would use. So last weekend I decided I would make it a weekend project.” He says the site is a very simple Ruby and Sinatra app without a database, with a front end built on Twitter Bootstrap.

Pinstagram is unlike other clones in that it seeks to offer something special, something extra, and so after a weekend of hacking, the two made a Pinterest for Instagram, and given the wild popularity of the two, and the fact that Pinstagram enriches the experience of both the Pinterest community and the Instagram community, it has a great chance at actually succeeding despite being one of many companies inspired by Pinterest.

¹ Pongpaet’s blog post