Instagram is currently the most dominating social media platform. It’s actually hard to imagine a world without Instagram. All these years, it has kept us connected. For some of us, Instagram is our news channel, for some it maybe even a way to earn. Over the years, it has widely grown almost all over the world. An average person spends around 2 hours scrolling on Instagram, especially during the current pandemic. Maybe Instagram is the only thing that has kept us sane, connected, and socially well in COVID19 times. It is basically our go-to app, but how many of us know how it actually started?
Instagram was launched on 6th October, 2010. It all started when Kevin systrom built an app prototype of a web app called Burbn, which was inspired by his taste for fine whiskeys and bourbons. The Burbn app allowed users to check-in, post their plans, and share photos. Although at the time, location-based check-in apps were very popular, the photo-sharing feature of Burbn was very unique. Eventually, all this led to a team of people who were willing to support his venture. After his old friend Krieger joined, the two reassessed Burbn and decided to focus primarily on one thing: photographs specifically taken on mobile devices. They carefully studied leading apps in the photography category at that time. After investing a lot of time on research, it was finally rewarding. Their Basic intention for the app was that it would be minimalist and require as few actions as possible from the user. After eight weeks of fine-tuning the app, they gave it to friends to beta test and evaluate its performance. After resolving some errors in the software, they brought it to launch.
As and when it was launched, the app gained around 25000 followers in a day. At the end of the first week, Instagram had been downloaded 100,000 times, and by mid-December, the number of users had reached one million. Since then, it has been growing ever since.
Down below are some interesting facts about Instagram-
- The most Instagrammed food is pizza.
- All the posts with hashtags generate at least 12.6% more engagement.
- Instagram is mainly popular because it lets people earn, one can earn a lot with a sponsored post.
- Videos on Instagram get more than double the response than any other social media.
- In 2012, just after 2 years after it’s creation, Instagram was acquired by Facebook for $1 Billion.
