It seems it has been with us since always, since the most remote past. We can’t picture a world without it, and in spite of that it hasn’t been around for so long. Instagram, the fastest-growing, hooking picture-sharing network has just turned six years old. They grow up so fast!
Everything started in October 2010, when Kevin Systrom and Mark Krieger started a cell-phone photography project. On October 6, 2010, the app was uploaded to the App Store under the name Instagram.
Some months passed by, the team grew a little and Instagram started introduced features that have since been a defining part of its essence. In January 2011 hashtags were introduced, to help users share pictures about the same topic in the same place. Some more months passed until, in September 2011, version 2.0 became available. New filters were added, high-resolution images became editable. By then, the app’s users had increased from one million (December 2010) to ten million (September 2011). More than 150 million pictures had been posted before that month.
The next year, 2012, was a year of milestones. The app had gotten 25 million new users by March. Suddenly, in April, Instagram was sold to Facebook for $1,000,000,000. By September, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, announced that there were more than 100 million registered users.
Since then, everything was constant improvements. After having changed its terms and conditions, it gave users back their online freedom, assuring that no picture from the network could be used by third persons.
Then, there came the option to tag any person or brand in any picture. On December 12, 2013, direct messages were introduced. Then came customized advertising options and Instagram Stories, which gave users the chance to upload pictures and videos for a limited time.
Here we are, six years later, having gone from one to five hundred million users. If Instagram has accomplished that in only six years, what will the future six years bring?
