Instagram is the most successful, best known, and most used mobile app for uploading and sharing photos. This highly successful project may seem to have appeared out of the blue, become a star overnight, and made its founders a fortune in the blink of an eye. But that is not at all the case.
Behind every success, there is a lot of work, disappointment, and burnout. Let\’s take a look at how this app came to be and who is behind it that allows us to share a part of our lives every day.
The Roots of Famous Apps
Kevin Systrom, one of the original owners of the company, successfully graduated from Stanford University in 2006and went to work for Google. There he worked as a product marketing manager and learned a great deal. After working there for two years,he decided to move to a startup called Nextstopand got his first independent idea for a program calledBurbn. He pitched it to investors and received a $500,000 investment. However, it did not become one of the most famous colossi in the world of social networking.
Mike Krieger, co-founder of the most profitable photo app,was involved in creating a working version of Burbn. Together they worked on the original app. However, they soon discovered that it did not work due to its complexity. So they decided to limit it to one function only: photos. within a week, they created another prototype, which unfortunately was again unusable.
Despite their efforts, it was still too complicated a program. So they decided to simplify it further and only upload and share photos. The prototype was given the name Instagram eight weeks after its creation, in October 2010 . The application quickly became popular, and its popularity continues to this day. In January 2011, the hashtag was introduced, and in January 2011
, the name was changed to “Instagram.
And now, who owns the company?
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Like many other projects, startups, and companies, it was acquired by Facebook in 2012 for $1 billion. While it may seem that way, this is not a large sum of money. And this fact is certainly behind the similarities between Facebook and Instagram. Have you noticed it too? And how much time do you spend on social media each day?