**Introduction**
In the age of social media dominance, Instagram stands out as a visual powerhouse. This photo and video-sharing platform has become an integral part of our lives since its inception in 2010. With over a billion monthly active users, Instagram has evolved from a simple photo-sharing app to a global social phenomenon, influencing everything from culture and marketing to mental health and politics. In this article, we’ll take a deep dive into the world of Instagram, exploring its history, features, impact, and its potential future.
Instagram is a social media platform that emphasizes photo and video sharing via its mobile app. You can take, edit, and publish visual content for both followers and non-followers, as long as your account is public. Users can interact with your content via likes, comments, shares, and saves.
It’s hard to remember a time before Instagram. At one time, “Do it for the ‘gram” was a common saying, which meant, essentially, “Do something so we can take a picture and post it to Instagram.”
Since then, Instagram has placed a larger and heavier emphasis on video. So you no longer hear the phrase “Do it for the ‘gram.” I bet, though, that a second version of the phrase will soon follow. (Maybe “Do it for reel?”)
If you’re not part of the one billion users on Instagram, you might want to reconsider. The app is a great chance to engage with top brands and stay a part of friends’ lives. When I want to see how my college friends are doing, I don’t check Facebook, I check Instagram. Plus, you can follow your favorite celebrities or political figures to see candid photos of their everyday lives.
To sign up for Instagram, all you need to do is download the Instagram app on your phone and click the ‘Sign up’ button. You can choose to sign up through Facebook or use your email or phone number. After you choose a username and password, you’re ready to build your profile.
If you’re ready to sign up for Instagram, follow these steps below:
- Go to the Instagram site on your desktop, or download the Instagram app from the App Store (iPhone) or Google Play Store (Android).
- If you’re on desktop, click “Log in with Facebook”, or fill in the form with your mobile number or email, name, username, and password. Then click “Sign up”.
- On Android, click “Sign Up With Email or Phone Number”.
- On iPhone, select “Sign Up”.
- Enter your email address or phone number, then click “Next”. Alternatively, you can sign up with your Facebook account.
- Once you’ve filled out your username and password, you will be instructed to fill out your profile info. Then, tap “Done”.
- If you register with Facebook, you’ll need to log into your Facebook account if you’re currently logged out.
History
Instagram originated with Stanford graduate Kevin Systrom, who had previously worked at Google. His initial creation was Burbn, so named because of his interest in whiskey and bourbon. Inspired by the popularity of Foursquare and other location-based platforms, Burbn allowed users to post check-ins along with photos, which were not yet a staple of social posting. Systrom secured venture funding for Burbn and went on to recruit fellow Stanford graduate Mike Krieger, who had worked on the social media platform Meebo. They reworked the concept to focus on photographs taken on mobile devices and renamed it Instagram. Systrom and Krieger embraced minimalism with their prototype, concentrating on images (with the option to add filters), comments, and “liking” features. The duo also decided to eschew a Web version for an iOS app that would capitalize on the much improved photographic capabilities of the iPhone 4. They finalized the app in a few months, posting the platform’s first photos in July 2010. Instagram was released to the public in Apple’s App Store on October 6, 2010, and reached 25,000 users on its first day. Less than three months later it had one million users, a phenomenal achievement.
As Instagram’s popularity grew rapidly, the company drew the interest of various investors and potential buyers. In April 2012, 18 months after its launch, Instagram was bought for $1 billion in cash and stock by Facebook. The acquisition came about a month before Facebook’s initial public offering.
Description and features
Instagram’s service is relatively straightforward. It focuses on posts containing images and/or short-form videos. These posts are contained within a user’s profile and may be displayed publicly within Instagram or privately to the user’s followers. There are two main channels for posting: into the user’s permanent feed or into their “Stories,” a special section where content remains for 24 hours before disappearing (unless specifically archived). It is also possible to go “live,” streaming video directly from a camera to the platform.
Users may connect with each other via private message (known as a direct message [DM]), where they can share permanent photos or videos or vanishing photos or videos (similar to Snapchat). Users are able to “follow” each other, with all of the accounts one is following being aggregated into a single feed. The platform also allows for browsing by topic or hashtag, and a user can view a random mix of popular posts.
Instagram includes the ability to take photographs or videos in-app and also to edit new or existing photos or videos with the use of text, gifs, icons, and filters that add various lighting effects, distortions, or other features, including hats or cat ears. Images were originally required to be square, 640 by 640 pixels to fit the width of the iPhone. However, in 2015 size restrictions were expanded to 1080 pixels.
Feed posts may contain a caption from the user, geotagging data, and/or tags linking to other user accounts. Captions frequently feature hashtags to make posts readily findable and searchable by other users. The platform also allows for text comments to be added to feed posts and for users to “like” posts through the use of a heart icon. For Stories, users are able to send emoji-based reactions or reply by private message.
The service is free to use and, similar to sister company Facebook, brings in revenue largely from advertisements. Originally available only on Apple’s iOS, it released versions for Android (2012), Web (2012), Fire OS (2014), and Windows 10 (2016).
Influence and criticisms
The popularity and nature of the service brought many advertisers to Instagram and helped launch the era of the “influencer”—individuals who have built a considerable social media following and use that influence to advertise particular products or services. Influencers are often courted by brands and may receive financial compensation and free products for posting information or reviews or name-dropping a product in their posts or videos.
Although widely lauded for its meteoric rise and extreme popularity, Instagram has come under fire for issues that plague social media platforms: inappropriate content, misinformation and disinformation, and insufficient moderation. Studies have also shown that it can have a detrimental effect on teen mental health, especially impacting the self-esteem of young girls.
