The Instagram social network celebrates 10 years. On October 6, 2010, the Instagram social network application was released on Apple's App Store. At that time, it mainly provided its users with photo sharing, when it also offered its editor built mainly on many different filters and frames. The Instagram application was originally intended for sharing photos with an unconventional 1: 1 aspect ratio in a resolution of 640 × 640 pixels, which corresponded to the width of the display of the then iPhones. Gradually, various filters or simple photo editing before sharing were added, and the resolution was also increased to Full HD.
The first interest in buying Instagram in 2011 was unsuccessfully expressed by Twitter. In April 2012, Instagram started operating in Android and was downloaded by over 1 million people in the first day alone. By this time, it already had more than 27 million users on the Apple platform alone. That same month, Mark Zuckerberg offered Instagram founder Kevin Systrom $ 1 billion, with Instagram becoming part of Facebook but remaining independently managed. And Kevin Systrom agreed.
How it all began
Instagram was originally based on the Burbn app created by Kevin Systrom in 2009. Users could share photos focused on whiskey and bourbon. Instagram was officially launched on October 6, 2010, and on the first day alone it managed to reach 25,000 users. It had over 100,000 downloads at the end of the first week, and in mid-December, the number of users reached 1 million. Today, it has a billion active users worldwide.
Instagram has been struggling with more or less aggressive competition throughout its existence. Under the Facebook banner, the popularity of Instagram did not decrease, on the contrary, the user base continued to grow and the application began to pack new features. The first serious challenger was Snapchat, to which Instagram developers responded by introducing the so-called Stories, which later spread to Facebook. It is about sharing pictures/videos enriched with various accessories. The specialty, however, is that the Stories disappear after 24 hours. The Chinese social network TikTok has become a newer competitor of Instagram. However, Instagram was already able to respond to this and in 2020 launched the Reels function, which is a special card with 15-second videos. However, unlike Stories, they do not disappear.
Stories are also dedicated to the latest annual update, in which it is possible to go back to 3-year-old stories, either through the story calendar or through the story map. Stories were not removed after 24 hours, as some may have thought, but they still linger today, and you can even share them again.
A little statistic
According to Hootsuite, Instagram in 2020 can boast a billion active users who access the network at least once a month. 63% of all users view Instagram at least once a day. The average Instagram user spends 28 minutes a day in the application. About 500 million users use the popular Stories feature every day. The distribution of users is relatively balanced, 52% are women, 48% are men.
It is no longer the case that the network is strong only in the USA. 89% of users are outside the United States. Nevertheless, the USA has the most users of all countries - 110 million. The second place belongs to Brazil with 70 million users, the third to India with 69 million, and 4th place to Indonesia with 59 million. Russia closes the top five with 40 million users.
Not surprisingly, the application enjoys popularity, especially among young users. Instagram is used by 67% of people aged 18 to 29. Among people aged 30 to 49, Instagram is about every second.
It is worth recalling which post he has collected the most likes in history, so the sign on Heart on Instagram. You may be a little surprised, but the picture of an ordinary chicken egg won. To date, the image of an egg has almost 55 million likes. As a reminder of the anniversary, the Instagram update brings another novelty, but you have to look for a while. This is an easter egg that will also take you back to Instagram history. If you scroll up in the settings (swipe down), you will be able to choose one of the historical Instagram icons.