Actually it was a site for everyday users to feel like a photographer vs selfies. Selfies were not that big at that time. The big thing at the time was the filters that let you make your photos look classic. They never anticipated it becoming what it is today.
Tried to delete the pornhub app but I got the shakes. Totally with you on deleting AIM and I will even throw out Tinder too. #teamSolidarity
I sometimes think this when I'm in the shower crouched down and shaving my butt hole. How ridiculous anxiety levels must be living as a famous person and doing completely normal activities in private.
Instagram funding was based on photo-sharing ... not filters. Photo Sharing straight off a phone camera was the market they were grabbing. Filters were just candy to the biz plan. It wasn't a "site". Maybe you're thinking of Flickr. There was no Instagram website in its first 2 years. It was a smartphone app, meaning it was targeting amateur phone cameras. But the main thing was unprecedented ease of sharing, right off your cellphone, instantly ... thus, why they chose the word Instagram. And if you think selfies weren't a thing in 2010, well,,,,but, I guess you're talking exponential growth of smartphone sales and Instagram/Snapchat ... So, you're right, Instagram and Snapchat made selfies a much bigger thing than in the Flickr days, and photo-booths, and before ... because of the easy, instant sharing.
Both Flickr and Instagram are apps, I used the word site casually. But without a doubt, the emphasis on Instagram in the early days was on the filters - that's what got it the initial traction and what the founders put their focus on. Yes sharing photos was part of it of course but what made it differentiated and catch on was the filters to make mediocre pictures look more professional and classic. This isn't my opinion, this is what the cofounders claim and what actually happened. People we not taking selfies at first with Instagram. In 2010 it was a very different experience going through a feed.
Sweet ... this is my wheelhouse. I've been a commercial software developer for 25+ years, and was assigned to track iPhone App development prior to iPhone 4. We had venture capital friends in Silicon Valley sharing Biz Plans, often for technical advice. Flickr was still a website then. Instagram was released solely as an iPhone App with social networking features from Day 1...and yes, filters too. The main things were the social networking, simplicity and being an iPhone App. Yes, filters were part of the first release, because it was easy to do and others were doing it. But Instagram was pivoted out of a social networking app -- Burbn -- that was failing for being too complicated, but that Systrom saw photo-sharing taking off. But it did spring out of the way co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger saw people using Burbn. That is: quick, social sharing — and a desire to share photos from places. That’s the foundation of Instagram. As Sawyer puts it in his book Zig Zag: The Surprising Path to Creativity: They began by studying all of the popular photography apps, and they quickly homed in on two main competitors. Hipstamatic was cool and had great filters, but it was hard to share your photos. Facebook was the king of social networking, but its iPhone app didn’t have a great photo-sharing feature. Mike and Kevin saw an opportunity to slip in between Hipstamatic and Facebook, by developing an easy-to-use app that made social photo-sharing simple. They chopped everything out of burbn except the photo, comment, and like features. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/instagram-used-to-be-called-brbn/373815/ And this was all tied to the release of the iPhone 4, in 2010. I can show more history and quotes, but don't have quotes from the biz plan anymore. That Atlantic article is pretty good.
Man I wished I had become an app developer instead I chose Marketing. I spent a big chunk of my career in Silicon Alley, I am not disputing that Instagram is primarily a social network, I am only saying the feature that distinguished it and made it popular early on. There's a reason why the founders made it the first thing they mentioned in their mission statement back then. Basically I am saying the filters help distinguish it as a a photo sharing app, and you are saying it is the social network aspect (photo sharing with network) that made the filter photo app take off. In truth, it was the combo of these features in an easy to use UX. I remember Hipstamatic as well which was overtaken by instagram. Interesting times and thanks for sharing the articles.
