Over the past eight years, the photo and video sharing social network has given birth to extraordinary things.
With over a billion users, partly because its parent company is the largest social media network, Instagram has become synonymous with sharing photos and videos online.
But how did we get here?
After all, it’s not like people avoided iceland phone number data sharing visual content before (hello YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, etc.).
So what makes Instagram so iconic in the first place?
Let’s get to the heart of the matter.
The Incredible Story of Instagram’s Growth
When it comes to successful Instagram growth, it’s all about timing.
After months of prototyping and UX testing, co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger launched the platform in October 2010 and saw 25,000 users join in the first day.
For what ?
Instagram’s early growth success crm4 innovation is much more than a series of updates has been partly attributed to the fact that it was launched around the time of the iPhone 4, one of the first smartphones with a camera decent enough to replace the typical point-and-shoot digital cameras of the time.
Additionally, they made it easier to bz lists beautify photos taken by these decent, but not great, devices using pre-made filters.
This is why, thanks to Apple’s creation of a vast network of iOS devices, Instagram was able to catapult itself to success through the network effect.
From there, Instagram reached one million users in three months. And that million quickly turned into five million, then 10 million and so on ….
The crazy thing is, this is organic growth. Instagram didn’t spend a single dollar to get to the top of the app charts.
You probably know the rest of the story: about a year and a half after its launch, Instagram was acquired by Facebook for $1 billion. At that time, the team was only 13 people, which means there were ~2.3 million users for every 1 employee.
And let’s be real: Facebook buying Instagram was probably the smartest thing the company has ever done.
