Yes, this idea had to happen sooner or later: Two incredibly popular social tools have merged.

Pinstagram shares the same basic layout design as Pinterest.

And just last week, the merger occurred out of humor. It’s called Pinstagram, an amalgamation of Pinterest and Instagram employing the former’s downward-streaming interface design as a display setting for the latter’s broad public appeal of kitchy imagery techniques.

Ideally, Pinstagram provides a desktop environment for a mobile application that didn’t have one of its own, explained co-creator Pek Pongpaet in a Wired interview. This way, Instagram lovers now can view entire portfolio themes and concepts in a Web page-size environment distinct from Instagram lovers’ blog sites.

Not that this deeper realization originally factored into Pinstagram’s creation. Pongpaet revealed in Wired that he and business partner Brandon Leonardo concocted it as a joke — playing off the Pinterest and Instagram names — but saw value in the idea after mulling it awhile longer.

Because it’s so new, Pinstagram has only a few thousand image shares and even fewer members, but the registration rate has been prodigious. And Pinstagram possesses many of the same traits that make Pinterest a convenient and creative platform for photojournalists, educators and job hunters.

A version for iPad is said to be in the works.

David Sheets is a sports content editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and STLtoday.com, and president of SPJ’s St. Louis Pro chapter. Reach him by e-mail at dsheets@post-dispatch.com, on Twitter at @DKSheets, or on Facebook and LinkedIn.