The History of Instagram

The history of Instagram as the second-largest social media ever should be interesting for all Instagrammers and others. When Instagram was created or even another history about the Instagram account, all are covered in this blog. 

When was Instagram started?

After months of trying, Instagram was created and launched on oct.06.2010. Twenty-five thousand users showed up on the first day! But it was not an over-night success, and of course, there is a long story about this, which I will tell you. 

I remember a time when I wished for a visual (and just optical social media) to share some of my newest shots on it Or to find my old childhood friends and see what they look like now! 

There was one time I cooked a delicious pizza, and It looked like it came from heaven! I wanted to take a picture of it and show it to every people I meet for the rest of my life! Such a pity, Instagram wasn’t there to help me! So thank god for Instagram, right?

In this article, I had a little research to find out what the history of Instagram is and why it is so popular?

Before learning how to write, humans contacted through cave paintings. Why did the man find a need to paint on the walls of his caves?

• To communicate with each other.
• To be immortal and be remembered
• To decorate the cave and make life more beautiful with art
• To teach future visitors something
• To express feelings and a lot of other things!

Reread it without considering the cave; it’s like the uses of Instagram! In other words, Instagram is the modern cave wall for us, so The caveman inspired Instagram!

This picture above can represent both a hunting expedition or areligious ceremony. Those were the main activities of the Paleolithic man. In conclusion, social networking has been existent since the beginning of humans and will most likely be around until the end of humans.

Instagram history timeline

• October 6, 2010: Instagram launches
• December 12, 2010: Instagram has 1 million users.
• March 21, 2011: first worldwide InstaMeet
• August 3, 2011: 150 millionth photo upload
• September 20, 2011: introducing version 2.0 with four new filters.
• September 26, 2011: 10 million users!
• November 21, 2011: the launch of weekend hashtag project #VHP
• April 3, 2012: Instagram launches on android too.
• April 9, 2012: Facebook buys Instagram.
• June 28, 2012: Instagram designs photo pages for the web.
• July 26, 2012: Instagram has 80 million users!
• December 11, 2012: Version 3.2 with a new filter.
• December 21, 2012: version 3.4.1 brings 25 languages in.
• May 2, 2013: tag photos on Instagram.
• June 20, 2013: introducing videos o Instagram.
• December 12, 2013: introducing Instagram direct.
• December 1 2014 Instagram reaches 300 million
• October 22, 2015 launch of boomerang
• December 15, 2016: Instagram reaches 600 million
• February 22, 2017: multiple photos per post

Now: Instagram has more than 1 billion monthly active users, up from 800 million in September 2017. Instagram is now one of the most popular social networks worldwide.

Who created Instagram first?

This is the real story of how Instagram started working. It began as a part-time project by Kevin Systrom  when he was learning to code. And after he met Mike Krieger, they created Instagram! But first, let’s know more about them.

Kevin Systrom  is Instagram co-founders, and here is his biography. Kevin was born on 30th December 1983. His mother worked as a marketing executive at a zip car, and his father was the vice president of TJX company.

He studied science and engineering management at Stanford University, and he did his intern at Odeo ( the twitter company).

After graduation, he found a job as a marketing associate product manager at Google.

He quit his job in 2009 (after three years) and joined a startup called the next stop as a product manager. So he became closer to social media.

Mike Krieger co-founder of Instagram

Mike was born on 4th March 1986 in Sao Paulo. He studied symbolic systems at Stanford University (where he met Kevin). In university, he worked on a photosharing project for a class. It was an app for treating seasonal affective disorders named “Send me some sunshine.” The idea was that a user would send a photo of sunshine to another user on another side of the world ( with a wintery climate and fewer hours of daylight) just to cheer them up.

In early, 2010 he did self-training after work. Kevin had no formal training in computer and coding, but he loved it. So while working at the next stop, he learned to code at nights after work and on the weekends, and he got it by himself.

After learning to code, he built an HTML5 prototype called Burbn ( the name was inspired by his love of fine whiskeys and bourbon ) burbn was an app (multi-faceted) that allowed users to check-in, post their plans and share photos like Facebook. It was a mix of check-in and gaming _foursquere and mafia wars!_ and photo sharing in one app. But it was confusing, so it didn’t succeed.

People were just using the app to share their photos. Coffee photos, dog photos, bathroom mirror photos! Everyday life photos. This was the time Krieger came on board. He joined Systrom in Dogpatch labs at San Francisco’s pier 38.

They looked at how burbn users loved photo sharing and then studied every favorite app in the photosharing category. So they canceled burbn and started over. They spent some time experimenting and searching. There was a prototype for Instagram called scotch, but it didn’t have filters and was full of bugs.

Finally! After months of trying, Instagram was created and launched on oct.06.2010. Twenty-five thousand users showed up on the first day! After that, it was just growing itself. Instagram nailed the timing and hit one million users in three months! Then it became 2 million, which later became ten million users! And it was all organic growth without any advertisements.

What was the first photo on Instagram?

The first Instagram photo ever uploaded was the picture of the dolly ( Kevin Systrom’s dog) when she was a puppy. Systrom said it was taken at Chilako tacos in Todos Santos.

The fundings

With Instagram’s massive growth in users, investors became interested. In Jan 2011, the company began to meet with interested parties, and one month after that, Instagram raised about 7 million dollars from a variety of investors, including benchmark capital. After that, the company got the attention of the leading companies on social media, twitter, and Facebook.

This allowed Systrom  and Krieger to hire more people, but they kept it lean with a few employees.

Interests from twitter

Dorsey knew Systrom from his intern time at Odeo, and he was very interested in the company. So, in March 2011, he offered around $500 million in stock, reportedly. Systrom  declined; he preferred that Instagram remain an independent company.

By March 2012, Instagram reached 27 million users, and it was released for Android phones in April. It was downloaded more than one million times in less than one day. The company received a new round of funding at a valuation of $500 million.

Interests from Facebook

In April 2012, Zuckerberg (the founder of Facebook) made an offer to purchase Instagram for $1 billion in cash and stock, with the provision that the company would remain independently managed. Shortly after that, Facebook acquired the company for $ 1 billion in cash and stock.

What made Instagram so popular?

I believe there are some reasons for this success:

• Instagram allows you to take ordinary photos and make them look extraordinary; this can be compelling.
• People don’t want to read long texts, so they are more interested in watching videos and pictures, and this is the baseline of Instagram.
• It’s simple and easy to use and free!
• Instagram focused on doing one thing instead of trying to do too many things.
• It has a lot of fun features and updating by the daily needs of users.
• It doesn’t contain too many frustrating ads; nothing pops up!
• You can make an excellent business profile on in and make a lot of money from being an influencer.

So, haven’t you find the story of Instagram inspiring? If you have anything to add to this history line or you have questions or anything, please comment below to get in touch with me.