Twenty years ago photographing was practically exclusive to photographers and people who could buy a camera and operate it. With new digital and mobile communication technologies (cell phones and smartphones), photographing, editing and publishing images are actions that even children can perform. One of the milestones and leaders of this revolution in accessibility in photographic technology with the birth of the Instagram mobile app. Instagram is a social photography network that allows users to share the images they produce, as well as make the process more fun, with the possibility to add image filters to the photos. The hardest part these days is meeting someone who is not part of this great network.
Brazilian computer science student Mike Krieger from Stanford University and American Kevin Systrom joined forces in March 2010 and founded Burbn, which developed a mobile recording and photography service. Burn’s initial foreign investment was $ 500 and the first photo posted online was of Systrom. a dog and the breeder’s girlfriend. Seven months later, on October 6 of the same year, the network was launched to the public under the name Instagram, which according to the servants is the combination of the words? Instant? and “telegram”, which would be two proposals of the application: share and instantly send the photos produced by the smartphone. Originally only available in Apple App Stores (iPhone only), Instagram has become the most downloaded free app in less than 24 hours. Two months after the official version. launch, the photo network reached 1 million users, which proved the success of the idea of the creative duo, since during the trial period, the application was left with only 80 users with all the resources of the filter application, effects and sharing on other social networks.
- The hashtag function.
- Used to link topics to other users.
- Was made available by Instagram in January 2011 and then other networks such as Facebook started using it as well.
- In February of the same year.
- Instagram investors provided a $ 7 million investment that helped update and improve the app.
- By the end of this year.
- The app already had 15 million users.
- An average of 60 photos posted per second and a total of 400 million photos.
- All this with little more than a year open.
The version available for Android phones was launched on April 3, 2012. As Android is the mobile platform with the most users in the world, the success of Instagram has only increased. More than a million downloads were made to the PC in less than 24 hours with this version. Due to the success, just six days later, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the purchase of Instagram for a billion dollars. In May of the same year, the application reached 50 million users. The creators attribute this great success to the availability of Instagram on the Android platform and also to the entry of various celebrities on the network, which also drove the entry of their respective fans.
The month of December 2012 was marked by controversy for Instagram. The first was the deactivation of the integration with Twitter, which resulted in the automatic sharing of photos on the social network of microblogs. The other was Instagram’s announcement of a change to the terms of service that would go live on January 16. One of those changes was that the company was now free to generate advertising revenue for Facebook by granting advertisers the right to display user photos and other personal information for advertisements. Users interpreted this as opening rights to the images, allowing Instagram to sell the photo to whomever they wanted, without permission. The repercussions were mainly negative in the United States: there were hundreds of account cancellations. The next day, Instagram announced that it was not going to sell users’ photos and it was all a misunderstanding. Despite all this, in February of the following year, the application reached the 100 million active user mark.
In December 2014, Instagram reached 300 million active users, with an average of 100 million new users per year. The app is available in 90 countries in English, Mandarin, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish. Since its launch, more than 1. 5 billion photos have been shared.
One of the curiosities of Instagram and its popularity is that there are photos published on the network itself from North Korea, a country that is politically, economically and technologically closed. To date, it is believed to be the only network with users in this country.