Instagram is an American photo and short-form video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters, be organized by hashtags, and be associated with a location
via geographical tagging. Posts can be shared publicly or with preapproved followers. Users can browse other users’ content by tags and locations, view trending content, like photos, and follow other users to add their content to a personal feed.
A Meta-operated image-centric social media platform, it is available on iOS, Android, Windows 10, and the web. Users can take photos and edit them using built-in filters and other tools, then share them on other social media platforms like Facebook. It supports 33 languages including English, Hindi, Spanish, French, Japanese, and Korean.[9]
Instagram was originally distinguished by allowing content to be framed only in a square (1:1) aspect ratio of640 pixels to match the display width of the iPhone at the time. In 2015, this restriction was eased with an increase to 1080 pixels. It also added messaging features, the ability to include multiple images or videos in a single post,
and a Stories feature—similar to its main competitor, Snapchat, which allowed users to post their content to a sequential feed, with each post accessible to others for 24 hours. As of January 2019, Stories was used by 500 million people daily.
Instagram was launched for iOS in October 2010 by Kevin Systrom and the Brazilian software engineer Mike Krieger. It rapidly gained popularity, reaching 1 million registered users in two months, 10 million in a year, and 1 billion in June 2018. In April 2012, Facebook acquired the service for approximately US$1 billion in cash and stock.
The Android version of Instagram was released in April 2012, followed by a feature-limited desktop interface in November 2012, a Fire OS app in June 2014, an app for Windows 10 in October 2016, and an app for iPadOS in September 2025.
Although often admired for its success and influence, Instagram has also been criticized for negatively affecting teens’ mental health, its policy and interface changes, its alleged censorship, and illegal and inappropriate content uploaded by users.
History
Instagram began development in San Francisco as Burbn, a mobile check-in app created
by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. On March 5, 2010, Systrom closed a $500,000 (equivalent to $682,200 in 2023) seed funding round with Baseline Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz while working on Burbn. Realizing that it was too similar to Foursquare, they refocused their app on photo-sharing, which had become a popular feature among its users.They renamed it Instagram, a portmanteau of instant camera and telegram.
2010–2011: Beginnings and major funding
Josh Riedel joined the company in October as Community Manager,Shayne Sweeney joined in November as an engineer, and Jessica Zollman joined as a Community Evangelist in August 2011.
The first Instagram post was a photo of South Beach Harbor at Pier 38, posted by Mike Krieger at 5:26 p.m. on July 16, 2010.On October 6, 2010, the Instagram iOS app was officially released through the App Store.
In February 2011, it was reported that Instagram had raised $7 million (equivalent to $9,357,057 in 2023) in Series A funding from a variety of investors,
including Benchmark Capital, Jack Dorsey, Chris Sacca (through Capital fund), and Adam D’Angelo.The deal valued Instagram at around $20 million. In April 2012, Instagram raised
$50 million (equivalent to $65,610,000 in 2023) from venture capitalists with a valuation of $500 million (equivalent to $656,100,000 in 2023).Joshua Kushner was the second largest investor in Instagram’s Series B fundraising round, leading his investment firm, Thrive Capital, to double its money after the sale to Facebook.
Features and tools
Users can upload photographs and short videos, follow other users’ feeds,and geotag images with the name of a location. Users can set their account as “private”, thereby requiring that they approve any new follower requests.Users can connect their Instagram account to other social networking sites, enabling them to share uploaded photos to those sites.
In September 2011, a new version of the app included new and live filters, instant tilt–shift, high-resolution photographs, optional borders, one-click rotation, and an updated icon. Photos were initially restricted to a square, 1:1 aspect ratio; since August 2015, the app supports portrait and widescreen aspect ratios as well. Users could formerly view a map of a user’s geotagged photos. The feature was removed in September 2016, citing low usage.
Edits
Edits is a video editing application only available on Android and iOS. The app includes some AI features and the ability to post directly to Instagram or Facebook. Users can also view statistics on their videos and see other user’s videos that are trending in the Inspiration tab.Announced in January 19, 2025 (as a response to the U.S. government’s actions against TikTok and CapCut), which was available for pre-order on the iOS App Store and set for an Android launch in February 2025, and had an initial release date of March 13, 2025, for iOS, after some delays, officially released for both iPhone and Android devices on April 21, 2025.
Instagram Reels
Instagram Reels is the short-form section of the American social media platform Instagram.Reels focuses on vertical videos that are less than 90 seconds of duration and various features for user interaction.As of November 2024 Reels average collectively 150 billion views a day, Creators earn money based on the amount of views they receive, or through ad revenue.The increased popularity of Instagram Reels has led to concerns about addiction for teenagers.
In November 2019, it was announced that Instagram would start to roll out a new feature to Brazil known as Instagram Reels. It would then expand to France and Germany. Instagram Reels was officially launched in Pakistan in August 2022, two years after its global rollout in August 2020.It functions similarly to the Chinese video service TikTok, focusing on allowing users to create short videos already set to existing sounds from other clips. Users could make up to 15 (later 30) second videos using this feature.Reels also uses existing Instagram filters and editing tools.
5 Comments