The Story Behind- Instagram

Instagram needs no introduction, as most of us have used the app to capture moments that were special in our lives. The app gets its name from the merging of two terms, ‘instant camera’ and ‘telegram’. Let’s look at the timeline of this millennial app that has gone to become a part of our personal and social lives.

The timeline

The idea for creating Instagram came about in October 2009, when computer programmer Kevin systrom started working on a location-based app called ‘Burbn’. In March 2010, he received a seed funding from an American firm called Baseline Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz for $5,00,000, while working on Burbn, which became the predecessor of Instagram.

On July 16, 2010, Kevin Systrom created the first Instagram post, months before the platform went public. On October 6, 2010, he, along with Mike Krieger, launched Instagram on the public platform as an iOS-only app. The app hit almost 25,000 users on the day of its launch and by the end of its first week, it had as many as 1,00,000 downloads.

Image source: time.com

In April 2012, the app was made available for Android phones. During this time, Facebook acquired Instagram.

In May 2013, tagging was introduced. This feature made it easier for the users to tag their friends and family members in the pictures shared. In 2014, Instagram provided its users with the option of sharing videos on the platform.