This app lets you see what it’s like to be a celebrity on Instagram

by Amanda Connolly — in Apps

This app lets you see what it’s like to be a celebrity on Instagram

Have you ever wondered what your favorite celebrities or bloggers see when they log on to Instagram?

Well, Being is a new app for iOS that lets you do just that – see Instagram through the eyes of your favorite users.

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While it might seem creepy initially, Instagram’s follower lists are public so you could technically already recreate your friends’ and other users’ feeds if you wanted to, just not in such a seamless way.

When you first log on, you’ll see a list of some of the biggest names on the app – everyone from Taylor Swift and Kim Kardashian to Donald Trump. There are several categories to choose from, like celebrities, artists, athletes and I was pleasantly surprised to see techies in there as well.

If you just want to snoop on your friends, you can link your own account and view the feeds of the people you follow.

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To see what their feed looks like, all you have to do is choose one. They take a little while to load but it’s interesting enough to make it worth the wait. Most celebrities follow a tiny number of accounts in comparison to the number of people who follow them so it is interesting to see how tight their feed is and the type of people they are following as well.

For example, I chose to view the feed of Taylor Swift. She’s got nearly 67 million follower and is following a measly 83 back. These mostly include her famous friends, like Lena Dunham and Serena Williams. In the case of someone like Kim Kardashian, you get to see the makeup artists and stylists she is following and if you’re into it, you can follow them from your personal account without leaving the app.

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I tried to follow Elon Musk and Marissa Mayer’s feeds but the app is currently experiencing some server issues after getting “crazy launch traffic,” according to the company, so hopefully that gets resolved fairly quickly.

It’s pretty obvious from the get-go that Being isn’t just a complementary app for Instagram users; it does its very best to make sure you don’t need to leave its app to do anything on Instagram. The only thing it can’t do is post images to your own account because Instagram’s API won’t allow it.

If you’re worried about someone snooping on your feed, you can just set your account to private and it won’t show up on the Being app.

Being is currently only available on iOS and its not clear if an Android version is coming.

Update: 

As of February 25, Being has been removed from the app store after Instagram pulled the app’s API status.

➀ See social media from another perspective [Being]

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Amanda Connolly is a reporter from London. Happy to hear your thoughts on amanda@thenextweb.com or @tweets_amanda on Twitter.

Amanda Connolly is a reporter for The Next Web, currently based in London. Originally from Ireland, Amanda previously worked in press and editorial at the Web Summit. She’s interested in all things tech, with a particular fondness for lifestyle and creative tech and the spaces where these intersect. Twitter

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