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Instagram was founded by Kevin Sistrom and Mike Krieger. Back in 2010, they created an application where people could share, comment and like photos. Initially, Instagram allowed you to take square-shaped pictures, like instant photo cameras Polaroid and Kodak Instamatic.

October 6, 2010, the application appeared in the App Store. In the first week, 100,000 users managed to download it. In December, the number of users exceeded 1 million.

The development of an early version of the Instagram logo and the first filters was carried out by consultant photographer Cole Rise. There is even a dedicated filter in the application – Rise. The first filter was invented by Sistrom on his laptop. It’s called X-Pro II.

2011 – hashtags to masses

A year after the official launch, Twitter and Facebook became interested in the project. Despite the successful start and promotion, the development team remained small. In 2012, 13 developers and a consultant photographer worked in it.

In 2011, Instagram continued to increase the number of filters and also generally changed the design, including the program icon. It is also worth mentioning the introduction of hashtags that helped categorize photos and select topics of interest.

2012-2015 Facebook comes into play

In April 2012, Facebook bought the company for $1 billion. Under the terms, the founders had to maintain control over Instagram. As a result, Zuckerberg did not fulfill his promise.

In the same year, the application officially appeared on the Android platform. It was downloaded more than a million times in the first day alone. There is still. an important change was the ability to record short videos. At first they were only 15 seconds long. In December 2013, Instagram received its own messenger – Direct.

One of the important changes of this period is the transfer of Facebook’s advertising business model to Instagram, the application begins to earn on advertising. This is the first step towards the transition from creative to commercialization. Instagram is gradually turning into a more expanded version of the social network, where not so much photos are important as building a user’s personal brand.

2016-2017 – stories, stories everywhere!

2016 was an important year for Instagram. The main thing is that the design of the icon and the application itself has been updated. Instead of the old “camera,” a more minimalistic picture with a gradient appeared.

Another important innovation was the emergence of new algorithms, which now demonstrated publications on human hobbies instead of chronology. In 2016, the social network launched Stories. This function will later become almost the main way of communication on the platform. In 2019, 500 million users watched them daily.

The increase in the amount of content created made a big leap for commercial projects. Statistics and business accounts appeared. Instagram opens up new opportunities for doing business and creating your brand. In many ways, this became possible due to the expansion of profile statistics, which includes publication coverage, categorization of subscribers, and statistics on likes.