What is Instagram?
Instagram is a fun and quirky way to share your life with friends through a series of pictures. Snap a photo with your mobile phone, then choose a filter to transform the image into a memory to keep around forever. Instagram allow you to experience moments in your friends' lives through pictures as they happen. It is available for free in the Apple App Store and Google Play store.Who is the founder?
Kevin Systrom (CEO, co-founder)
Kevin (@kevin) graduated from Stanford University in 2006 with a BS in Management Science & Engineering. He got his first taste of the startup world when he was an intern at Odeo that later became Twitter. He spent two years at Google - the first of which was working on Gmail, Google Reader, and other products and the latter where he worked on the Corporate Development team. Kevin has always had a passion for social products that enable people to communicate more easily, and combined with his passion for photography Instagram is a natural fit.Mike Krieger (co-founder)
Mike (@mikeyk) also graduated from Stanford University where he studied Symbolic Systems with a focus in Human-Computer Interaction. During his undergrad, he interned at Microsoft's PowerPoint team as a PM and at Foxmarks (now Xmarks) as a software developer. He wrote his Master's thesis on how user interfaces can better support collaboration on a large scale. After graduating, he worked at Meebo for a year and a half as a user experience designer and as a front-end engineer before joining the Instagram team doing design & development.Where does the name come from?
When they were kids, they loved playing around with cameras. They loved how different types of old cameras marketed themselves as "instant" - something they take for granted today. They also felt that the snapshots people were taking were kind of like telegrams in that they got sent over the wire to others - so they figured why not combine the two?How did the idea come about?
They love taking photos. They always assumed taking interesting photos required a big bulky camera and a couple years of art school. But as mobile phone cameras got better and better, they decided to challenge that assumption. The created Instagram to solve three simple problems:- Mobile photos always come out looking mediocre. Instagram awesome looking filters transform your photos into professional-looking snapshots.
- Sharing on multiple platforms is a pain - Instagram help you take a picture once, then share it (instantly) on multiple services.
- Most uploading experiences are clumsy and take forever - Instagram have optimized the experience to be fast and efficient.
How much is it worth?
In April, 2013, Facebook agreed to buy the quickly growing photo-sharing social network Instagram for a cool $1 billion (the final price, a mixture of cash and stock, was $715 million because Facebook shares tumbled before the deal was finalized). The sky-high purchase price, well above Instagram’s $500 million valuation at the time, led some to wonder if Facebook was helping to fuel another tech bubble.Instagram has had an impressive year under Facebook. The photo-sharing network had about 30 million users at the time of the buyout. Today there are more than 100 million monthly active users posting more than 40 million photos per day. The company has doubled its staff to more than 25 employees, including a new business operations director brought over from Facebook.
That is the story of Intagram, from their hobby, then solving problem and lastly make money from it.
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