> The advantage a website gives them is more users using their product more often which means more money from their advertisements. Not really. For example, Fa

> The advantage a website gives them is more users using their product more often which means more money from their advertisements. Not really. For example, Facebook has proven that more people are drawn to mobile. While they may gain some new users, it is going to be negligible to their current base. In addition, I would bet that those users find them and signup via the web will be users who do not use the app. > My personal experience is that I am discouraged from using their site. When I want to tag a user in a comment, or see who has liked a photo or look through my list of followers I feel discouraged and I close the browser tab. This may be your experience, but I would bet that you are a minority in the larger scheme of things. > This is easily avoidable by just using their current UX of uploading pictures in their mobile app. Namely, one at a time. Putting this into their website wouldn't allow users an easy way of uploading 100's of images at once. True. But the desktop is not their focus. > My interpretation of this is that your opinion is the perfect web product for Instagram is one that people don't use. Which I guess brings us back to the beginning question. :) No, my interpretation is that Instagram was not built as a web product. It was built as a mobile product and the web is secondary to that. They are focused on building the best product to meet their demand, and unfortunately for you their demand is not on a browser-based solution. Not to be rude but I think you are looking for a deeper reason why they don't have a web app, when in reality the reason is simple. Again, the purpose of Instagram was to capture photographic moments in time via your mobile device and share those moments with others. They built a successful product around that and to meet that need.