28/03/2025
The Success Journey of Instagram
Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms in the world, but its success didn’t happen overnight. Here’s the journey of Instagram’s success from its inception to becoming a tech giant today:
1. Early Days & Founders (2010)
Instagram was founded by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in San Francisco, USA. Initially, they developed an app called Burbn, which focused on location sharing, but they realized that the photo-sharing feature was more popular.
They simplified the concept and renamed the app Instagram (a combination of “Instant” and “Telegram”).
On October 6, 2010, Instagram officially launched on the App Store for iOS devices and received an overwhelming response. In just 24 hours, the app was downloaded 25,000 times!
2. Rapid Rise in Popularity (2011-2012)
Within two months, Instagram reached 1 million users.
In 2011, Instagram introduced the hashtag feature to help users find photos based on specific topics.
On April 2012, Instagram released a version for Android, which was downloaded over 1 million times in one day.
3. Acquisition by Facebook (2012)
Instagram’s rapid success caught the attention of Mark Zuckerberg. On April 9, 2012, Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion in cash and stock. At the time, Instagram had only 13 employees!
However, Facebook allowed Instagram to operate independently, although later, Facebook's features were gradually integrated into it.
4. Feature Expansion & Rapid Growth (2013-2016)
Instagram continued to innovate with new features:
2013: Introduced 15-second video posts.
2015: Launched advertising (ads) to help businesses market their products.
2016: Released Instagram Stories, inspired by Snapchat, allowing users to share photos/videos that disappear after 24 hours.
Stories became one of the most popular features on Instagram.
5. Instagram Becomes a Giant (2017-2020)
2018: Instagram reached 1 billion monthly active users.
2018: Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger left Instagram due to differences in vision with Facebook.
2020: Instagram introduced Reels, a short-video feature similar to TikTok.
6. Instagram Under Meta (2021-Present)
In 2021, Facebook rebranded as Meta, and Instagram became part of Meta’s ecosystem alongside WhatsApp, Messenger, and Facebook.
Instagram continues to evolve with features like NFTs, monetization for creators, and AI-driven user experiences.
Conclusion
From a small startup with two founders, Instagram has grown into one of the world’s largest social media platforms, with over 2 billion monthly active users. Its success is driven by continuous innovation, integration with Meta, and its ability to adapt to global digital trends.
