The backlash to Instagram's privacy kerfuffle of a few weeks back has opened the door for competing social photo apps—and there's no shortage of these. EyeEm, a free app and Web service for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, has been a major beneficiary of this slipup by Instagram. So, what does EyeEm have to offer, besides not being Instagram? True, it is nearly identical to the prior phenom, but offers some slick interface tricks, a more-capable Web interface, and an emphasis on tagging—always a good way to find photos of interest.

Setup
You can get started with EyeEm either from the website or an app store. At www.eyeem.com, you can set up your account simply by clicking the blue Facebook Connect bar, or you can sign up with an email address and password. Once you're signed into the site, you're encouraged to "Connect with your friends or discover amazing new people to follow." The app is a free download from the iTunes App Store, Google Play, or Windows Phone Marketplace. I installed it on my iPhone 4S, a Samsung Galaxy S III, and a Nokia Lumia 820, though this review concentrates on the iPhone version.

When I ran the app for the first time, that familiar message asking permission to send me notifications popped up. But really, the number of apps wanting to interrupt whatever I'm doing with notifications has gotten out of hand. I guess it only makes sense for this kind of communications-oriented app, however. After this, the simple interface had one green bar button saying, "Find Friends." Pressing this offered finding Facebook and Twitter friends, along with a score of recommended accounts to follow, such as the EyeEm team itself. Simply hitting the gray Follow button next to the username got me going. I only had one friend on each using the app, though I have over a thousand contacts between the two social networks, so I guess EyeEm has yet to overthrow Instagram.

Interface
Next to the big camera icon at bottom center are just two choices—Friends and Discover—making Instagram's five buttons along the bottom seem positively cluttered by comparison. The Friends view looks familiar to those who've used Instagram and Flickr. Thankfully, though, the images aren't restricted to the squares that Instagram's are. I also liked that you can view the photos on EyeEm full screen, but some photos in the feed view had too many comments below, spoiling the visual journey of browser the photo stream. Instagram limits the number of comments displayed.

One annoyance that EyeEm shares with Facebook is that, by default, it shares all your "likes" to your Facebook timeline. So don't start out the gate liking photos that you wouldn't want everyone in your Facebook sharing circles to know about. I guess the services see this as a way of promoting their apps. At least EyeEm lets you change this setting in the Web interface, where Instagram makes you burrow through settings menus on the phone.

Soon after creating an account, notifications of new people following me started arriving on my iPhone—even though my only uploaded photo was of the keyboard I'm typing this on! As with Instagram, when you check out another EyeEm user's page, numbers across the top tell you how many photos they've shared, how many followers they have, and how many users they're following. Tapping on a number takes you to the list of users in the group, any of which you can view the photos of or start following yourself right away. One thing I wish both services had was an indication of how many photos the user has uploaded in this list, which would save you from viewing a lot of profiles of users who haven't uploaded any.

Shooting with EyeEm
EyeEm really adds nothing to the iPhone camera app, and in fact even dumbs it down a bit—there's no zoom, HDR, or panorama choices. Nor is there even a grid overlay, not to mention extras you get with the likes of Camera+ or Camera Genius like separate focus and exposure points or self timers. Instagram very impressively lets you see filter and border effects even while your shooting, something EyeEm hasn't mastered yet.

Blinging Your Shots

Once you snap the shutter, EyeEm comes into its own. You're encouraged to apply one of the 13 well-chosen enhancement filters by simply swiping left and right over the image, and to overlay a border choice by swiping up and down. If you want the Instagram square aspect ratio, a scissors icon lets you choose the crop. But EyeEm lacks another one of Instagram's cooler capabilities—selective focus and tilt-shift.

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Describing

Another differentiator from Instagram is it suggests tags for your images. My test photo of a coffee cup prompted the suggestion "Hanging out," which I suppose wasn't too far off the mark. You can also swipe past this autosuggestion to add your own tags, such as "coffee cup." Next you can add location by tapping "Add place." I typed "pcmag" and could then add this as a place choice, presumably taking location from my iPhone's GPS tag on the photo. This tagging is a key differentiator with Instagram, which offers twitter-style hashtags, but doesn't make them a part of every photo. Still, I was able to find nearly 5 million photos of #coffee on Instagram.

Sharing
Once your shot is all filtered, bordered, tagged and located, you're ready to upload, via five transparent buttons along the bottom of the screen. Choices include Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, and Foursquare—all readily identifiable from their logos. Tapping any of these for the first time brings up a login screen for the chosen service. You tap any combination of services, after which their button takes on the trademark background color of the services you've uploaded too. It's a smart interface touch, of which EyeEm is full. Next, just touch the big Upload bar at the bottom.

Web

EyeEm does Web better than Instagram, too: The Facebook-purchased service only let me see my own uploaded photos, while EyeEm's website offered all the discovery and exploration of my connection's and popular photos. I could view either in an infinite justified scrolling view or one by one as a large-image slideshow. The Discover tab in particular shows photos grouped by tags like "hanging out," "Chinese food," and "New York City," though not everyone abides by the tags' connotations.

No Private Eyes
One thing EyeEm is not about is privacy. Anything you upload will be visible to anyone who's on EyeEm. For posting to the standard social networks, you could use those services' own privacy setting, but there isn't even a privacy section in EyeEm's setttings. Instagram does, by contrast, offer a "Photos are Private" option.

Keep Your Eye on EyeEm

With Instagram's recent vulnerability, the field has opened up for competing social photo sharing apps. Indeed the venerable Flickr recently released a widely praised new version of its iPhone app. But while Flickr's mobile app, our Editors' Choice, is all-encompassing photo app, EyeEm hews more closely to the Instagram model, which will suit Instagram defectors. The newer service bests the better-known service when it comes to what you can do on its website, and offers some slick interface tricks and more structured tagging to categorize photos. Still, Instagram's more impressive photo enhancements and massive audience make it the choice among purely social photo apps.

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