---
title: 'Love Instagram for iPhone photography? Well, here’s another reason to love it, Portland'
date: '2010-11-04T14:38:44-07:00'
type: post
word_count: 567
char_count: 3571
tokens: 738
categories:
  - '#featured'
  - Apps
  - Instagram
  - iPhone
  - Oregon
  - Photography
  - photos
  - Portland
tags:
  - 'community manager'
  - instagram
  - iPhone
  - 'josh riedel'
  - Love
  - photography
  - Portland
  - 'reed college'
---

# Love Instagram for iPhone photography? Well, here’s another reason to love it, Portland

\[HTML3\]Now for as much as I love the Portland startup scene and all of our homegrown goodness, I have to admit that I take a certain pleasure in the random Portland connections to other popular Web stuff. Like the fact that the [creator of LiveJournal went to high school in Aloha](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Fitzpatrick "Brad Fitzpatrick"). Or that [ReadWriteWeb employs a good chunk of Portlanders](http://siliconflorist.com/2008/06/21/readwriteweb-the-adidas-of-tech-blogs-now-a-portland-blog/ "ReadWriteWeb, the Adidas of tech blogs, now a Portland blog"). Or that the [community manager for Vimeo](http://vimeo.com/dalasv "Dalas Verdugo") lives here.

Well, here’s another one to add to the list. You know [Instagram](http://instagr.am "Instagram"), that wickedly popular photo app for the iPhone? Yeah, well they’ve got a Portland connection too.

If you’re not familiar with Instagram, it’s [been taking the world of iPhone photography by storm](http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/instagramapp/ "Instagram shots on Flickr"). Barely a month old, it’s rapidly become the go to app for taking and sharing [iPhone photos](http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/iphoneography/interesting/ "iPhoneography"). And with good reason. It brings together all of the best of elements of Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare. Letting you take, tweak, share, comment, like, and geotag photos all from one spot.

[![Oh grate](https://i0.wp.com/farm2.static.flickr.com/1237/5136952016_01e9006a23_o.jpg?resize=612%2C612)](http://www.flickr.com/photos/turoczy/5136952016/ "Oh grate by turoczy, on Flickr")

It’s all socially and photo-y and stuff. And, well, fun. Remember the whole having fun thing?

So turns out that that awesome little app? It also has a Portland connection. Meet [Josh Riedel](http://twitter.com/#!/joshriedel "Josh Riedel"), community manager for Instagram.

[After his previous employer—Nextstop—was acquired by a little company called Facebook](http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/08/facebook-acquires-social-travel-recommendation-site-nextstop/ "Facebook Acquires Social Travel Recommendation Site Nextstop"), Josh decided to come back to the home of his alma mater, [Reed College](http://web.reed.edu/ "Reed College"). Next thing he knew, he was getting a call from a former Nextstop cohort who had just built an app that was taking off like wildfire, Instagram.

Like Nextstop, Josh was brought on to serve as community manager.

“I’m essentially responsible for making sure Instagram grows into a healthy, creative, vibrant community,” said Josh.

So he’s working to better understand the community, figure out how people are using the app, take feature requests, and answer questions.

What’s that? Feature requests? Oh, I’d really really like to be able to swipe across the image to run through the different filters. I mean, if you’re asking.

I’m sorry. Where was I? Oh yes. And he’s doing all that right here. From good old Portland, Oregon, the de facto hub of mobile development. And community management. Yeah. i just added that one.

And it probably goes without saying, but Josh would love to have some more followers from Portland—[he’s “Josh” on Instagram](http://instagr.am/p/CegW/ "Josh on Instagram").

For more information, visit [Instagr.am](http://instagr.am/ "Instagram"). Or follow @instagram on Twitter. To download the iPhone app—it’s free—[visit Instagram in the App Store](http://itunes.com/apps/instagram/ "Instagram in the App Store").