Instagram has more than 300 million people using it at least once a day. The service was bought by Facebook in 2012 for about £677m ($1bn) and has not stopped growing ever since. According to Facebook, an average of 95million photos and videos are posted each day and Co-founder Kevin Systrom said its success was the result of a lot of hard work.
Five years ago, Instagram went past Twitter, after being adopted by high-profile celebrities and sports stars. Instagram’s biggest competitor for youthful eyeballs, Snapchat have surpassed 100 million users. Instagram launched in 2010 with 25, 000 people downloading the app on its first day and in growing to 500m milestone, the app has suffered its fair share of controversy.
Instagram’s logo change was irking users lately as out went the nostalgic old camera icon and in its place, a simple rainbow coloured replacement and it did not go well. We wanted to create a mark that was universal and we did all these studies of companies and how their marks have evolved over time. What you see is they go from complex to simpler and simpler and more iconic. If selfie culture is a new religion, then Instagram is a digital Mecca.” Mr Systrom disclosed. But thought provoking posts form stars, detailing the excruciating effort that goes into the perfect selfie, have made some question the impact apps like Instagram are having on our views of body image and lifestyle. Eighty percent of users are outside the US. That make it difficult to properly assess Instagram’s standing against Snapchat and other rivals.
“Our job is to be the most useful and interesting place to be” Mr Systrom said.