Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom are the two people that founded Instagram. Systrom studied computer science at Stanford, and Krieger studied product design at the Rhode Island School of Design.
They first met in 2007, when Krieger was working on a start-up and Systrom was an intern. They hit it off and started working on a project together.
In 2009, they came up with the idea for Instagram. It was based on a similar app called “Picaboo”, which had been released the year before.
The Beginning of Instagram
A year later, in October of 2010, Instagram was launched, and it was nothing more than an app that lets you share photos with your friends.
At the time, there were already a few apps that did this, but Instagram was different because it used a filter to make your photos look like they were taken with a vintage camera. This feature was popular right from the start, and soon Instagram had a cult following and its popularity grew. Within a few months, it had 1 million users.
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Acquired By Facebook
In 2012, Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion. This was a big deal at the time, and it made Instagram one of the most popular social networks in the world.
Since then, Instagram has added a number of different features to its platform. You can now share videos, send messages to your friends, and even follow hashtags.
Competing With Snapchat and Growth of Influencer Marketing
In 2013, Instagram also introduced a feature called “Stories”, which lets you share photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours. This was introduced to compete with the hugely popular social media platform – Snapchat and was an instant hit.
From 2013 to 2016, Instagram grew year after year. Many people claim that during this period, influencers really started to gain traction, which only made the platform more popular.
Many people started to notice how easily they can make money by leveraging an audience on the platform, and many decided to give it a go. A big portion of those who wanted success faster even resulted in buying Instagram followers, likes, and views to help the algorithm see that they are worthy of more organic exposure.
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Competing With TikTok
Since the initiation of TikTok in 2016, which is now the biggest competitor to Instagram, the app has been slowly losing users. However, it is still one of the most popular social media platforms in the world, with over 1 billion active users.
After the successful implementation of Snapchat’s core driver for success – 24-hour stories – Instagram pulled off the same trick with TikTok’s short and funny videos by introducing a brand new feature to the app – reels.
These reels are essentially short-form videos that users can browse at random – in a similar fashion to TikTok – and consume an endless amount of content relevant to their interests without them needing to search for it.
The introduction of the Reels feature quickly gave Instagram the much-needed boost after the huge success TikTok had in the industry.
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Conclusion
And there you have it – the story of Instagram. Instagram certainly had a very interesting past and we can’t wait to see what the future holds for the platform. Since its initiation in 2010, the platform has come a long way and to date, it has roughly a billion, active monthly users.
And if you’re thinking of giving Instagram a try or even trying to make money from it, giving yourself the much-needed boost by buying Instagram followers in this competitive landscape will allow you to quickly overcome the initial hurdle of getting noticed that many still struggle with this.
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