Today is the 4th birthday of the photo sharing application that has become a hit both sides of the pond, and further afield. Launched officially on the 6th October 2010, it only took till the 12th December of the same year for the app to have hit 1 million users.
Loved by brands, celebrities and normal people like you and me, Instagram is one of the fastest growing social platforms that is out there. And it is easy to see why.
With an easy to use interface on the app, working with both Apple and Android as well as having full website integration, Instagram allows you to upload your images and apply a variety of filters to alter the look of the image; be in with a retro hue or a more vibrant slant, Instagram also allows you to tag friends in the photo, use hashtags to explain the moment captured and also share further, by linking with your Twitter and Facebook profile seamlessly.
Dreamed up in 2010, Instagram is the brainchild of Mike Kreiger and Kevin Systrom. They both decided on creating a photo based app with the completely simple idea of helping the regular, and sometime boring photo look less “lame.”
And they have certainly achieved their goal. At the time of writing this, Instagram has TWO HUNDRED million monthly active users and out of this, more than 75 million of them are active on a daily basis! That is a lot of pictures! Interestingly the gender split is almost right down the middle, with 51% of all users being male, which is vastly different to other image based platforms, such as Pinterest for example.
Lots has happened throughout the course of Instagram’s short history: originally the app was only for Apple devices and was named the ‘iPhone app of the year’ in Dec 2011. In April of the following year, Android users were able to experience Instagram for the first time, when the app was available for them and later the same month, Facebook brought Instagram. That is less than two years after it was launched! Going from strength to strength, new filters, launch of photo maps, photo tags and videos have all been released in recent updates to the platform.
And it shows no signs of slowing down or stopping.
We look forward to seeing what the future holds next for our favourite photo enhancing and sharing social platform!
