Instagram

Instagram is an American photo and short-form video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters, be organized by hashtags, and be associated with a location via geographical tagging. Posts can be shared publicly or with preapproved followers. Users can browse other users' content by tags and locations, view trending content, like photos, and follow other users to add their content to a personal feed. A Meta-operated image-centric social media platform, it is available on iOS, Android, Windows, and the Web. Users can take photos and edit them using built-in filters and other tools, then share them on other social media platforms like Facebook. It supports 33 languages including English, Hindi, Spanish, French, Japanese, and Korean.

Overview§

Instagram is an American photo and short-form video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters, be organized by hashtags, and be associated with a location via geographical tagging. Posts can be shared publicly or with preapproved followers. Users can browse other users' content by tags and locations, view trending content, like photos, and follow other users to add their content to a personal feed. A Meta-operated image-centric social media platform, it is available on iOS, Android, Windows, and the Web. Users can take photos and edit them using built-in filters and other tools, then share them on other social media platforms like Facebook. It supports 33 languages including English, Hindi, Spanish, French, Japanese, and Korean. Instagram was originally distinguished by allowing content to be framed only in a square (1:1) aspect ratio of 640 pixels to match the display width of the iPhone at the time. In 2015, this restriction was eased with an increase to 1080 pixels. It also added messaging features, the ability to include multiple images or videos in a single post, and a Stories feature—similar to its main competitor, Snapchat, which allowed users to post their content to a sequential feed, with each post accessible to others for 24 hours. As of January 2019, Stories was used by 500 million people daily.

Instagram was launched for iOS in October 2010 by Kevin Systrom and the Brazilian software engineer Mike Krieger. It rapidly gained popularity, reaching 1 million registered users in two months, 10 million in a year, and 1 billion in June 2018. In April 2012, Facebook acquired the service for around US$1 billion in cash and stock. The Android version of Instagram was released in April 2012, followed by a feature-limited desktop interface in November 2012, a Fire OS app in June 2014, an app for Windows 10 in October 2016, and an app for iPadOS in September 2025. Although often admired for its success and influence, Instagram has also been criticized for negatively affecting teens' mental health, its policy and interface changes, its alleged censorship, and illegal and inappropriate content uploaded by users.

History§

Instagram started development in San Francisco as Burbn, a mobile check-in app built by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. On March 5, 2010, Systrom closed a $500,000 (equivalent to $700,000 in 2024) seed funding round with Baseline Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz while working on Burbn. Realizing that it was too similar to Foursquare, they refocused their app on photo-sharing, which had become a popular feature among its users. They renamed it Instagram, a portmanteau of instant camera and telegram.

2010–2011: Beginnings and major funding§

Josh Riedel joined the company in October as Community Manager, Shayne Sweeney joined in November as an engineer, and Jessica Zollman joined as a Community Evangelist in August 2011. The first Instagram post was a photo of South Beach Harbor at Pier 38, posted by Mike Krieger at 5:26 p.m. on July 16, 2010. On October 6, 2010, the Instagram iOS app was officially released through the App Store. It was reported that Instagram had raised $7 million (equivalent to $9,601,662 in 2024) in Series A funding from a range of investors, including Benchmark Capital, Jack Dorsey, Chris Sacca (through Capital fund), and Adam D'Angelo in February 2011. The deal valued Instagram at around $20 million. Instagram raised $50 million (equivalent to $67,320,000 in 2024) from venture capitalists with a valuation of $500 million (equivalent to $673,200,000 in 2024) in April 2012. Joshua Kushner was the second largest investor in Instagram's Series B fundraising round, leading his investment firm, Thrive Capital, to double its money after the sale to Facebook.

2012–2014: Additional platforms and acquisition by Facebook§

On April 3, 2012, Instagram released a version of its app for Android phones, and it was downloaded more than one million times in less than one day. The Android app has since gained two substantial updates: first, in March 2014, which cut the file size of the app by half and added performance improvements; then in April 2017, to add an offline mode that allows users to view and interact with content without an Internet connection. At the time of the announcement, it was reported that 80% of Instagram's 600 million users were located outside the U.S., and while the aforementioned functionality was live at its announcement, Instagram also announced its intention to make more features available offline, and that they were "exploring an iOS version". On April 9, 2012, Facebook, Inc. (now Meta Platforms) bought Instagram for $1 billion (equivalent to $1,346,000,000 in 2024) in cash and stock, with a plan to keep the company independently managed. Britain's Office of Fair Trading approved the deal on August 14, 2012, and on August 22, 2012, the Federal Trade Commission in the U.S. closed its investigation, allowing the deal to proceed. On September 6, 2012, the deal between Instagram and Facebook officially closed with a buy price of $300 million in cash and 23 million shares of stock. The deal closed just before Facebook's scheduled initial public offering according to CNN. The deal price was compared to the $35 million Yahoo! paid for Flickr in 2005. Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook was "committed to building and growing Instagram independently". According to Wired, the deal netted Systrom $400 million.

In November 2012, Instagram launched website profiles, allowing anyone to see user feeds from a web browser with limited functionality, along with a selection of badges, and web widget buttons to link to profiles. Since the app's launch it had used the Foursquare API technology to provide named location tagging. In March 2014, Instagram started to test and switch the technology to use Facebook Places.

2015–2017: Redesign and Windows app§

In June 2015, the desktop website user interface was redesigned to become more flat and minimalistic, but with more screen space for each photo and to resemble the layout of Instagram's mobile website. Beyond that, one row of pictures only has three instead of five photos to match the mobile layout. The slideshow banner on the top of profile pages, which simultaneously slide-showed seven picture tiles of pictures posted by the user, alternating at different times in a random order, has since been removed. Also, the formerly angular profile pictures became circular.

In April 2016, Instagram released a Windows 10 Mobile app, after years of demand from Microsoft and the public to release an app for the platform. The platform previously had a beta version of Instagram, first released on November 21, 2013, for Windows Phone 8. The new app added support for videos (viewing and creating posts or stories, and viewing live streams), album posts and direct messages. Similarly, an app for Windows 10 personal computers and tablets was released in October 2016. In May, Instagram updated its mobile website to allow users to upload photos, and to add a "lightweight" version of the Explore tab.

On May 11, 2016, Instagram revamped its design, adding a black-and-white flat design theme for the app's user interface, and a less skeuomorphistic, more abstract, "modern" and colorful icon. Rumors of a redesign first started circulating in April, when The Verge gained a screenshot from a tipster, but at the time, an Instagram spokesperson simply told the publication that it was only a concept. On December 6, 2016, Instagram introduced comment liking. Though, unlike post likes, the user who posted a comment does not get notifications around comment likes in their notification inbox. Uploaders can optionally decide to deactivate comments on a post. The mobile website allows uploading pictures since May 4, 2017. Image filters and the ability to upload videos were not introduced then. On April 30, 2019, the Windows 10 Mobile app was discontinued, though the mobile website remains available as a progressive web application (PWA) with limited functionality. The app remains available on Windows 10 computers and tablets, also updated to a PWA in 2020.

2018–2019: IGTV, removal of the like counter, management changes§

To comply with the GDPR regulations regarding data portability, Instagram introduced the ability for users to download an archive of their user data in April 2018. IGTV launched on June 20, 2018, as a standalone video application. The application was shut down and removed from app stores in March 2022, citing low usage and a shift to short-form video content. On September 24, 2018, Krieger and Systrom announced in a statement they would be stepping down from Instagram. On October 1, 2018, it was announced that Adam Mosseri would be the new head of Instagram. It was announced that Instagram would, beginning in Canada, pilot the removal of publicly displayed "like" counts for content posted by other users during Facebook F8. Like counts would only be visible to the user who originally posted the content. Mosseri stated that this was intended to have users "worry a little bit less around how many likes they're getting on Instagram and spend a bit more time connecting with the people that they care around." It has since been argued that low numbers of likes in relativity to others could contribute to a lower self-esteem in users. The pilot started in May 2019, and was extended to 6 other markets in July. The pilot was expanded worldwide in November 2019. Also in July 2019, Instagram announced that it would implement new features designed to reduce harassment and negative comments on the service. Instagram also started to pilot the removal of the "After" tab from the app, which had allowed users to view a feed of the likes and comments made by users they follow in August 2019. The change was made official in October, with head of product Vishal Shah stating that the feature was underused and that some users were "surprised" when they realized their activity was being surfaced in this manner. Instagram later restricted the ability to view public profiles without logging in, prompting users to sign in after viewing a limited number of posts. After the change, after viewing several posts a pop-up requires the user to log in to continue viewing content. Instagram launched a separate app known as Threads in the same month. Similar to Snapchat, the app allowed users to communicate through messaging and video chats. It was integrated with Instagram's "Close friends" feature, so that users could send images, photos, and texts privately to others, and also had Instagram's photo editing system embedded into the app. Though, Instagram discontinued this version of Threads in December 2021, mainly due to most of its features being rolled out on Instagram itself, along with low usage compared to other social media applications. Threads was not well-gained among Instagram's user base. Since its launch, only around 220,000 users globally downloaded the app, which represented less than 0.1% of Instagram's monthly active users, indicating a lack of success in driving adoption.

2020–present§

In March 2020, Instagram launched a new feature called "Co-Watching". The new feature allows users to share posts with each other over video calls. According to Instagram, they pushed forward the launch of Co-Watching to meet the demand for virtually connecting with friends and family due to social distancing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Instagram started a pivot to video, introducing a new feature called "Reels" in August 2020. The intent was to compete with the video-sharing site TikTok. Instagram also added suggested posts in August 2020. After scrolling through posts from the past 48 hours, Instagram displays endless posts related to their interests from accounts they do not follow. Instagram started testing a new feature called Vertical Stories, said by some sources to be inspired by TikTok in February 2021. The same month, they also started testing the removal of ability to share feed posts to stories. Instagram launched a new feature in which four people can go live at once in March 2021. Instagram also announced that adults would not be allowed to message teens who don't follow them as part of a series of new child safety policies. Instagram started allowing users in some regions to add pronouns to their profile page in May 2021. On October 4, 2021, Meta services suffered their worst outage since 2008, bringing down Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp. Security experts identified the problem as possibly being DNS-related. On March 17, 2022, Zuckerberg confirmed plans to add non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to the platform. Instagram started testing the removal of the ability to see "recent" posts from several hashtags in April 2022. This change became permanent and system wide a year later, and now hashtags can only be used to see a selection of curated content from "top" users. These changes are ostensibly an attempt to hinder the spread of misinformation, while Instagram has also repeatedly stated that hashtags do not help posts get views. In September 2022, Ireland's Data Protection Commission fined the company $402 million under privacy laws recently adopted by the European Union over how it handled the privacy data of minors. After being trialled in mid-2022, Instagram introduced Notes in December 2022. This feature allows users to share updates as short text posts of up to 60 characters with certain people, who can then reply to them using messaging on Instagram. Instagram introduced a new feature allowing users to browse and post GIFs in their comments in February 2023. Also in February 2023, Zuckerberg announced that Meta would start selling blue "verified" badges on Instagram and Facebook. On July 5, 2023, Meta launched Threads, a social network platform connected to Instagram that allows users to make public shortform blog posts comprising text, photos, and videos, along with to converse with other users and reblog other users' posts. Threads aims to compete with Twitter. Instagram launched a podcast titled "Close Friends Only" featuring conversations among celebrities in December 2023. The first episode featured rappers Ice Spice and Doja Cat. Subsequent episodes in June and August 2024 featured Reneé Rapp, Rachel Sennott, Megan Thee Stallion and GloRilla.

In April 2024, Instagram announced that they would start testing new tools "within weeks" to fight sextortion, a form of blackmail involving intimate pictures sent online. On August 2, 2024, Turkey blocked Instagram after the platform deleted posts from users offering condolences for the death of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. In December 2024, Instagram and MTA collaborated and sold Metrocards ft. creators such as New York Nico, Overheard in New York, and SubwayTakes. On September 3, 2025, Instagram launched a native iPadOS app, which before relied on the iOS app and did not use the larger screen size of tablets. In February 2026, Meta announced a new safety feature on Instagram that will alert parents if their teenage children repeatedly search for content related to suicide or self‑harm, as part of expanded parental supervision tools amid legal scrutiny of its impact on youth. Meta scheduled an end of support for end-to-end encryption in Instagram direct messaging in May 2026. After this change, messages are no longer protected by end-to-end encryption and are not exclusively accessible only to the communicating users. As a result, the level of confidentiality in direct messages is reduced compared to fully encrypted communications, and message content may be accessible under certain conditions, depending on applicable policies and regulatory frameworks. The change prompted concerns among privacy researchers and digital rights commentators regarding reduced message confidentiality and broader implications for messaging privacy and data protection.

Features and tools§

Users can upload photographs and short videos, follow other users' feeds, and geotag images with the name of a location. Users can set their account as "private", thereby requiring that they approve any new follower requests. Users can connect their Instagram account to other social networking sites, enabling them to share uploaded photos to those sites. A new version of the app included new and live filters, instant tilt–shift, high-resolution photographs, optional borders, one-click rotation, and an updated icon in September 2011. Photos were initially restricted to a square, 1:1 aspect ratio; since August 2015, the app supports portrait and widescreen aspect ratios as well. Users could formerly view a map of an user's geotagged photos. The feature was removed in September 2016, citing low usage. Posts can be "saved" into a private area of the app since December 2016. The feature was updated in April 2017 to let users organize saved posts into named collections. Users can also "archive" their posts in a private storage area, out of visibility for the public and other users. The move was seen as a way to prevent users from deleting photos that don't garner a desired number of "likes" or are deemed boring, but also as a way to limit the "emergent behavior" of deleting photos, which deprives the service of content. Instagram announced that it would start organizing comments into threads, letting users more easily interact with replies in August. Since February 2017, up to ten pictures or videos can be included in a single post, with the content appearing as a swipeable carousel. The feature originally limited photos to the square format, but gained an update in August to enable portrait and landscape photos instead. In April 2018, Instagram launched its version of a portrait mode called "focus mode", which gently blurs the background of a photo or video while keeping the subject in focus when selected. Instagram started to support Alt text to add descriptions of photos for the visually impaired in November. They are either generated automatically using object recognition (using existing Facebook technology) or manually specified by the uploader. On March 1, 2021, Instagram launched a new feature named Instagram Live Rooms, which lets four people go live together. In May 2021, Instagram announced a new accessibility feature for videos on Instagram Reels and Stories to allow creators to place closed captions on their content.

Hashtags§

In January 2011, Instagram introduced hashtags to help users discover both photos and each other. Instagram encourages users to make tags both specific and relevant, rather than tagging generic words like "photo", to make photographs stand out and to attract like-minded Instagram users. Users on Instagram have built "trends" through hashtags. The trends deemed the most popular on the platform often highlight a specific day of the week to post the material on. Examples of popular trends include #SelfieSunday, in which users post a photo of their faces on Sundays; #MotivationMonday, in which users post motivational photos on Mondays; #TransformationTuesday, in which users post photos highlighting differences from the past to the present; #WomanCrushWednesday, in which users post photos of women they have a romantic interest in or view favorably, along with its #ManCrushMonday counterpart centered on men; and #ThrowbackThursday, in which users post a photo from their past, highlighting a particular moment. Instagram started to allow users to follow hashtags, which display relevant highlights of the topic in their feeds in December 2017. The ability to search "Recent" hashtags was temporarily disabled during the 2020 U.S. elections, to prevent the spread of misinformation. And in April 2023 the ability to search recent hashtags was removed entirely in 2022 this was again tested on some users. Now, users are only able to see a curated selection of "popular" posts using a given hashtag. Instagram said that this is to prevent abuse and so that hashtags do not help users gain views, but it has since been noted that using hashtags is the only free method for an user to reach past their existing followers.

Explore§

In June 2012, Instagram introduced "Explore", a tab inside the app that displays popular photos, photos taken at nearby locations, and search. The tab was updated in June 2015 to feature trending tags and places, curated content, and the ability to search for locations. In April 2016, Instagram added a "Videos You Might Like" channel to the tab, followed by an "Events" channel in August, featuring videos from concerts, sports games, and other live events, followed by the addition of Instagram Stories in October. The tab was later expanded again in November 2016 after Instagram Live launched to display an algorithmically curated page of the "best" Instagram Live videos at present airing. In May 2017, Instagram once again updated the Explore tab to promote public Stories content from nearby places.

Photographic filters§

Instagram offers several photographic filters that users can apply to their images. Instagram added a "Lux" filter, an effect that "lightens shadows, darkens highlights and increases contrast" in February 2012. In December 2014, Slumber, Crema, Ludwig, Aden, and Perpetua were five new filters added to the Instagram filter family.

Video§

Initially a purely photo-sharing service, Instagram incorporated 15-second video sharing in June 2013. The addition was seen by some in the technology media as Facebook's attempt at competing with the then-popular video-sharing application Vine. In August 2015, Instagram added support for widescreen videos. Instagram increased the 15-second video limit to one minute in March 2016. Albums were introduced in February 2017, which allow up to 10 minutes of video to be shared in one post.

IGTV§

IGTV was a vertical video application launched by Instagram in June 2018. Basic functionality is also available within the Instagram app and website. IGTV allows uploads of up to 10 minutes in length with a file size of up to 650 MB, with verified and popular users allowed to upload videos of up to one hour in length with a file size of up to 5.4 GB. The app automatically begins playing videos as soon as it is launched, which CEO Kevin Systrom contrasted to video hosts where one must first locate a video. In March 2022, the application was shut down.

Edits§

Edits is a video editing application only available on Android and iOS. The app includes some AI features and the ability to post directly to Instagram or Facebook. Users can also view statistics on their videos and see other user's videos that are trending in the Inspiration tab. Announced on January 19, 2025 (as a response to the U.S. government's actions against TikTok and CapCut), which was available for pre-order on the iOS App Store and set for an Android launch in February 2025, and had an initial release date of March 13, 2025, for iOS, after some delays, officially released for both iPhone and Android devices on April 21, 2025.