Exactly a year ago was when gramfeed.com launched. Instagram had released developer APIs couple weeks prior and I started playing with the APIs and started creating a web interface for Instagram to pretty much do everything that the Instagram iPhone app did on the web. I put together a web interface for Instagram in couple hours over the weekend and launched it. Below are some of my key learnings.

Launch first and then iterate

At launch it was just a website to view popular photos, search photos, view user photos and view user feed. A couple days later I added features to like and commenting on photos, a week later I implemented user search, follow and unfollow capability. Eventually list/grid view, map visualization, lightbox photo loading were all implemented.

Below are photos of how the user interface has changed from minimum viable product at launch to a full feature Instagram web interface a year later:

Listen to your customers

Most of the features and UI changes were implemented based on user feedback. I had setup a Disqus comment box on the about page where people could leave feedback, report issues and request features.

Listening to your customers is the most important thing, they are the ones who use your site everyday and will have valuable feedback to make the product better. In gramfeed, everything from making grid view default, clustering markers, opening photos in lightbox were are changes done based on user feedback and proved very critical in getting more users to the site, not everybody takes time to give feedback, but it is very important to listen and consider feedback given by the few who take time to report issues and request features, chances are it is the same features others want too. Obviously watch for any product mentions on twitter and engage with users.

Gramfeed features at launch:

Browse User Photos, User Feed

Search Photos and view Popular Page

Gramfeed features a year layer:

Browse User Photos, User Feed, User Likes

Search Photos, Search Users, Search by location and view Popular Page

Comment and like photos

Follow and Unfollow users

Grid and list views

Visualize Photo location on map

Share on Twitter, Facebook, Google+

Make profile viewable to non-instagram users

Pin Photos from Instagram to Pinterest

Featured users and features tags

Analytics (Track every click, user event and API access)

Good analytics is one of the most important things for managing growth and scaling. Not just adding Google analytics tracking code but implementing event tracking within your javascript code makes a big difference. You can analyze things like how many people are clicking a particular button or how often people are scrolling down to next page or keep track of which API calls are made. You can also do things like change position of a button and track user engagement over time. Google Analytics is free and helps you gather tons of data to improve the product.

Below is a screenshot from a custom Google Analytics dashboard for tracking events on gramfeed.com

Marketing and User Acquisition

At launch I had sent out emails to a few major Tech blogs that covered Instagram, TheNextWeb and ReadWriteWeb covered it at launch. Mashable, Techcrunch and CNN Tech did mention gramfeed later on.

So how do you get a side-project covered in blog when there are funded startups trying to get coverage? - The key is to select a few bloggers and tell them your personal story that led you to developing the website rather than describing how great your product is.

Ultimately if your product is simple, easy to use and solves a problem then people will notice it, they will tweet about it, recommend it to their friends, influencers will take notice and you will get covered eventually, no special marketing is necessary, focus on making things simple and listen to your customers.

Having a blog also drives traffic back to the site, I started a blog to write and showcase brands on Instagram, events around the world captured with Instagram, celebrities on Instagram and more.

gramfeed.com growth from launch to a year later captured from google analytics is shown below. You can make custom dashboards using Google Analytics to track different trends and monitor growth.

Maintenance cost and Monetization

Gramfeed started as a side-project and never intended to grow this big. When launched, it was expected to be a interim website until Instagram launches their own web presence. Gramfeed runs on Google App Engine, which is great since you dont have to worry about scaling, however Google App Engine pricing structure changed in December which increased cost by almost 30x, I wrote a blog post couple months ago describing how I reduced the cost by 75% by optimizing the code and implementation.

Millions of pageviews meant more app hosting costs, so I had to start advertising on the site to cover hosting costs. Aside from Google Adsense, gramfeed also has affiliate program with Instagram photo, book and sticker printing partners like Keepsy, Blurb and Stickygram.

Conclusion

Overall working on gramfeed on my spare time while working full time as an Engineer at Intel has helped me gain so much knowledge on building an app, launching, marketing and scaling to millions of pageviews. What’s priceless is to sign-in to Google Real-time Analytics and see that at any second there are hundreds of people from all over the world accessing a website I created. Hope this is helpful.

PS: Cannot thank enough Mike and Shayne of Instragram for their support during the early development of gramfeed.

Thanks for Reading, feedback appreciated.

- Rakshith (@krisrak)