More info
- Creator
- Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger
- Released
- Owner
- Meta
- Type
- Photo & video sharing
- Website
- instagram.com
- Wikipedia
- en.wikipedia.org
Photo-sharing platform launched in 2010 by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, acquired by Facebook in 2012 for USD 1 billion — today ~2 billion monthly users.
Original draw: square photos + Polaroid-style filters (Lo-fi, Valencia, Mayfair) that instantly gave amateur photos a "look". Since then: Stories (copied from Snapchat in 2016), Reels (TikTok response, 2020), Threads (text, 2023), Notes, Broadcast Channels.
Algorithmic feed since 2016, "Recommended" injection everywhere. Criticism: comparison culture, beauty filters, "Instagram brain". Backend runs Django (Python) on top of PostgreSQL and Cassandra.