The social photo app Instagram is growing substantially with around 80 million registered users. Instagram has become a sort of timeline or memoir, i.e. a daily journal that can be dated back to when Instagram was first downloaded from the App Store.

This time the makers of this wonderful app have thought out of the box.  Instagram updated to version 3.0 on iOS and Android, and the update brings a number of improvements to the service.

The big new feature in Instagram 3.0 is the new Photo Maps feature. Photo Maps show user’s photos with geolocation on a map. The feature shows photos taken in one area stacked in groups. When zoomed out the map shows photo stacks for larger areas, but those stacks separate as the map zooms in.

Tapping on a photo stack will zoom in on the area, while double tapping will bring up a grid of all the photos in the stack.

Because not everyone yet is comfortable with sharing their whereabouts, past or present, Systrom emphasizes that users will be able to heavily edit what photos they chose to add to Photo Map. “We’re not introducing any new data,” he says, “All this stuff is already public. I’m able to deselect my house and my parents. And the whole goal here is to make it easy for people to show what they want to show.”

Folks at Instagram have taken considerable privacy precautions with the new feature. Photos aren’t added to a map until you okay them, and you’ll be able to clearly delineate whether you want each future upload to be added to your map. It’s also easy to browse your map and delete photos taken in certain locations like, say, your apartment.

Kevin Systrom, co-founder and CEO of Instagram says the first version of Photo Maps is merely “setting the stage for more interesting features to come.” Eventually, he suggested, he’d like to make it possible for users to browse events, like the Olympics.

Beyond Photo Maps, you’ll discover newly redesigned user profiles, and hashtag and location pages, as well as a revamped Explore tag. Photo grids now appear larger, as is the text box for entering captions. Infinite scrolling has been enabled, so you’ll no longer have to tap “load more” while browsing photos — they’ll load automatically. You can also report individual comments as abuse or spam.

Other improvements include a new upload page with easier buttons for sharing, infinite scrolling, speed improvements, and the ability to report and delete individual comments. You can grab the update from the App Store and Google Play.

The update to Instagram 3.0 is good, and Photo Maps are great, but people really want to see them implement them for other features. It would be cool to se future versions of Photo Maps worth for hashtags as well as profiles.