How I’ve discovered the real first post on Instagram.
Not the doggo picture highlighted by Time Magazine, BBC, Wikipedia, and even the founder of Instagram.
I was wondering about the principle of giving Instagram posts their web addresses. Then I found out that all of them have the same beginning (the same initial symbols): instagram.com/p, after which the system attributes a unique sequence of letters and figures to every post .
What if we put A, B, C etc after «/p/»? Turns out, this way we can find the very first 28 posts on Instagram. I was lucky to have dug out the very 1st post on Instagram. And it’s NOT that everybody believes it is.
This is the information that is being revealed for the first time in English.
The thing is, when Time Magazine asked Kevin Sysytrom, the founder of Instagram, what the first post had been, he recalled his post with a dog. After that, all media including Wikipedia have referred to this article.
However, Kevin’s memory let him down. Moreover, I’ve realised that the code of the first Instagram posts contains precise GMT timestamps.
It led me to the discovery: the real first post on Instagram was the photo of pier number 38 of South Beach Harbor, SF, posted by Mike Krieger, the co-founder of Instagram.
So, Instagram on its tenth anniversary also mentioned the wrong first post in the social network.
You can think: who cares which post was actually the first? These are 4 reasons why it matters:
- My research sheds light on how the first days of Instagram were going and how the main genres of this social network were established. So, it’s pics of a girlfriend, doggo, food, drinks and seashore. If you take a glance at the actual first Instagram post in history, you will be shocked how lame it looks and how much we have improved the quality of visual content over these 10 years.
- You will learn which qualities the startup needs to grow as fast as Instagram does and in what unpretentious conditions the legend was born.
- By the way, the forgotten landmarks of Instagram history can be visited in reality. You can see them all during one day. They are mostly picturesque landscapes and restaurants with good ratings. So if you incidentally have a travel agency in California, you can sell tours for Instagram fans.
- I personally find this story a tale about how all the world’s most respected mass media can make mistakes if they rely on the memories of people rather than on accurate fact-checking.
Let’s see at all the posts from instagram.com/p/A to instagram.com/p/Z:
A (instagram.com/p/A) and B (instagram.com/p/B) didn’t stay.
С:
This is the would-be-first post on Instagram. Actually it was the 13th one. The caption “test” was under that blithely taken picture of somebody’s dog and the foot of Kevin’s girlfriend Nicole in a slipper.
The picture was shot in Todos-Santos, Mexico. It’s a day-far from San-Francisco and it’s a popular destination for surfers.
D:
5 minutes later Kevin posted a photo from a stall Tacos Chilakos in Todos Santos (it has closed down already). A huge burrito cost only 16 pesos.
At that time Kevin could not afford an expensive vacation. A year ago he left the marketing department of the American subway project and had no paid job. Although Kevin found some investment in his project, his startup failed. The users of the first version of Instagram did not understand what the point of the app was.
E:
A bit later, Kevin published a picture of his girlfriend Nicole drinking a cocktail in a hot spot. Alcohol appears here for a reason: recently the future Instagram was called “Scotch”, and before that — “Bourbon”.
Specifically, at the time of shooting the application had a working name Codename. The idea to cross “instant camera”, which is “Polaroid type camera”, and “gram” standing for “telegram”, is to appear a month later.
F: Unavailable.
G:
😲 And here is the genuine picture number one. Everyone is confused by the fact that the chronology of posts does not quite match the alphabetical order. However, the time stamp in the code indicates impassively that this is the very first post on Instagram.
Mike Krieger, co-founder of Instagram, takes the photo of the South Harbour beach marina. Back then, the guys had no money for yachts: it’s a view from the Dogpatch labs business incubator, where they rented a cheap office. It is even possible to determine the exact location: this is pier #38.
H:
Mike is shooting how hard Kevin is working to create Instagram. It all happens in the same startup incubator with a strange name “Dog Patch Lab”. Later it moved from America to Dublin, where taxes are much lower.
Mike and Kevin studied together at Stanford, where Kevin was becoming an engineer, and Mike was getting a degree as a semiologist. When, much later, Kevin Systrom argues with Mark Zuckerberg, Mike leaves the company with him.
I:
A new person who publishes the portrait of Kevin and Nicole is Bruce Abbott. He didn’t work at this startup — he just came to check on his friends, so he is officially considered the first public Instagram user.
After the explosive success of the social network, Bruce did not ask his friends for a plumb job. Finally, he went to work as a designer at Disney.
J: Currently unavailable.
K:
Nicole also takes pictures of the view from the office window. Her role in the project was not the most prominent: she just supported the guys. In five years, she will be Kevin’s wife, have children, and get a chair on the board of Instagram.
L: Unavailable.
M:
The text of the post at that time was displayed as a comment to the photo, so now it is difficult to find it.
Kevin signs this photo “Amazing pins”. Today it is absolutely unclear what these icons are and what kind of amazing is in them.
N:
Bruce Abbott again. This is the first post with geolocation. This function has been in the social network from the very beginning, before hashtags and everything else came. It was initially planned that the service would be a competitor to Foursquare.
O:
The first proper picture of food! Unfortunately, this very sushi restaurant can’t be found now by this geolocation. It has moved a couple of blocks, but nothing has changed in other respects. It is famous for its large tuna rolls and prices quite low for California.
P:
This post can win the contest of the most disgusting photos of food in human history. Mike is having lunch at a Chinese diner. The table is full of Asian food and beer.
Q: not available.
R:
It’s only 1 pm but Nicole has already come to the bar.
It may seem that Nicole drinks strong drinks from morning till evening, but let me remind you that at that time the founders of the platform thought that on Instagram people would share intimate moments of parties with close friends.
If only they knew what a parade of fake smiles, carefully photoshopped reality and workshopped poses it will all turn into in the future.
S:
Now we see Kevin’s lunch. He seems to be going to eat soup with a fork.
T: unavailable
U:
Mike Krieger came to the movie theatre at the premiere of Inception. That day was Friday, but it was still work time. It is hard to believe that the guys had such carefree fun all the time.
Most likely, they wanted to simulate the ordinary citizen’s time-off situation. That’s why they go to a bar, a cafe or cinema.
They agreed to split responsibilities and go each one by their own route and document everything in the new app.
V: Unavailable.
W:
Nicole also went to lunch: this is Gialina pizzeria. The most expensive pizza — with figs — costs here $23. What was the scary thing Nicole photographed? This is a poster with the Tower of Pisa. Here you can see how it looks on a modern camera.
X, Y, Z, — have not been preserved.
🤩 After a couple of months of testing, the public version of Instagram will appear in the AppStore and almost immediately gain 1 million users and become the number one application.
This is my blog about digital media. My name is Pavel Gurov and I’m a tech blogger, podcaster and marketing enthusiast. Digital nomad since 2017. Based in Berlin.
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/digitalnomadguy
