Instaport backs up your Instagram pics [before Facebook moves in for the kill]

A few hours ago, the Interwebz exploded with news that Mark Zuckerberg and his social media giant noming machine Facebook, has bought Instagram for a billion smackers. This sent the social Web abuzz, speculating about the possible reasons why the Zuck made the purchase, which entailed the Instagram team moving on to Facebook HQ.

Naturally, people became worried that their favorite app would either be modified so much to accommodate Facebook’s needs, or that it would go quietly into that cold, cold night. Whether these scenarios will actually come true or not, wouldn’t it be better to backup your photos anyway to be on the safe side? That you can do with Instaport.

Instaport is a simple Web app that lets you back up your Instagram photos. It’s a pretty straightforward app to use which initially prompts you to log in using your Instagram login credentials and choose how and where to save your photos. As of writing, you can only gather all your photos into a .zip file and download it into your computer’s HDD, though the service also promises to export them into other sites like your Facebook, Flickr or RSS soon.

You can choose which of your photos you would like to backup based on several filters. You can choose to backup all your photos, the last few ones you took, snaps taken on specific dates, other people’s photos that you liked (♥), and all the photos that carried specific #tags.

Emblazoned at the top of Instaport’s page:

We are expecting high traffic right now. If you have problems downloading your photos, please try again tomorrow or the next days. kthx!

So it looks like you’re not the only one backing up your photos, possibly fearing the potential changes Facebook may strike upon Instagram. This doesn’t exactly constitute paranoia, especially given how the Zuck treats some of the startups his empire has gobbled. A handful of them got their tech siphoned off and funneled into Facebook on-site features, and then got thrown aside to wither away into obscurity. Remember Divvyshot, and drop.io? Yeah, neither can we.

In any case, Instaport is still a cool app for backing up your filter-stained Instagram opuses. Head on over to www.instaport.me to start saving your images.