Instagram

Instagram, online social media platform and social network service for photograph and video sharing. The app was launched in 2010 by cofounders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, and it is now owned by Meta Platforms, Inc., the parent company of Facebook. One of the biggest social media platforms in the world, Instagram surpassed two billion monthly active users in 2022. The company’s headquarters are in Menlo Park, California.

History

Instagram originated with Stanford graduate Kevin Systrom, who had previously worked at Google. His initial creation was Burbn, so named because of his interest in whiskey and bourbon. Inspired by the popularity of Foursquare and other location-based platforms, Burbn allowed users to post check-ins along with photos, which were not yet a staple of social posting. Systrom secured venture funding for Burbn and went on to recruit fellow Stanford graduate Mike Krieger, who had worked on the social media platform Meebo. They reworked the concept to focus on photographs taken on mobile devices and renamed it Instagram. Systrom and Krieger embraced minimalism with their prototype, concentrating on images (with the option to add filters), comments, and “liking” features. The duo also decided to eschew a Web version for an iOS app that would capitalize on the much improved photographic capabilities of the iPhone 4. They finalized the app in a few months, posting the platform’s first photos in July 2010. Instagram was released to the public in Apple’s App Store on October 6, 2010, and reached 25,000 users on its first day. Less than three months later it had one million users, a phenomenal achievement.

Description and features

Instagram’s service is relatively straightforward. It focuses on posts containing images and/or short-form videos. These posts are contained within a user’s profile and may be displayed publicly within Instagram or privately to the user’s followers. There are two main channels for posting: into the user’s permanent feed or into their “Stories,” a special section where content remains for 24 hours before disappearing (unless specifically archived). It is also possible to go “live,” streaming video directly from a camera to the platform.

Users may connect with each other via private message (known as a direct message [DM]), where they can share permanent photos or videos or vanishing photos or videos (similar to Snapchat). Users are able to “follow” each other, with all of the accounts one is following being aggregated into a single feed. The platform also allows for browsing by topic or hashtag, and a user can view a random mix of popular posts.

Instagram includes the ability to take photographs or videos in-app and also to edit new or existing photos or videos with the use of text, gifs, icons, and filters that add various lighting effects, distortions, or other features, including hats or cat ears. Images were originally required to be square, 640 by 640 pixels to fit the width of the iPhone. However, in 2015 size restrictions were expanded to 1080 pixels.

Feed posts may contain a caption from the user, geotagging data, and/or tags linking to other user accounts. Captions frequently feature hashtags to make posts readily findable and searchable by other users. The platform also allows for text comments to be added to feed posts and for users to “like” posts through the use of a heart icon. For Stories, users are able to send emoji-based reactions or reply by private message.

The service is free to use and, similar to sister company Facebook, brings in revenue largely from advertisements. Originally available only on Apple’s iOS, it released versions for Android (2012), Web (2012), Fire OS (2014), and Windows 10 (2016).