Gus Mueller: ‘Apple Should Make an Instagram Clone’

Gus Mueller:

Instagram is one of the last social networks I use these days, which I actually enjoy visiting. But I always get a little twitchy using it because it’s owned by Facebook (which I’m really not a fan of). And the ads are getting pretty annoying these days.

So wouldn’t it be awesome if Apple made a privacy focused clone of it? I know Apple doesn’t really do well when it comes to social services, but I’m wondering if a simple photo sharing site might not be impossible for them to do well.

I’ve been thinking about this ever since Mueller posted this a week ago. I think this could be great. At a technical level, iMessage shows that Apple can build a system that scales. The biggest problem I can think of is usernames. Apple IDs don’t have to be icloud.com / me.com / mac.com usernames — you can use any email address. And you wouldn’t want to expose your email and iMessage address publicly. But Game Center uses nicknames to avoid the same problem. Apple could either piggyback on Game Center nicknames, or set up a new namespace of nicknames for this hypothetical Instagram clone.

★ Friday, 27 April 2018