The 14-Year History of Instagram & Zuckerberg
PhotoBox to Burbn to the ‘Gram
It’s the app that has quickly taken over our lives, and for some, it has become their life. With 400M users and 30 minutes of average screen time, this is the app where celebrities (and our friends) share their lives.
But how did this small startup of 13 employees become a $100B tech giant?
PhotoBox and ODEO
Let’s go back, to even before Instagram’s conception. In 2006, Keven Systrom was a Stanford student who was, for lack of a better term, obsessed with the internet. He had just built a website called Photobox, where you could upload large photos and then print them out.
This caught the attention the attention of Mark Zuckerberg, who by that time, had already become a millionaire from Facebook. Mark tried convincing Kevin to drop out of the very prestigious institute so Kevin could work for Mark, but Kevin said no.
This “no”, allowed Kevin to take an internship at ODEO, a company that was a search website for RSS audio (basically podcasts). This is not relevant to this story, but ODEO’s founders developed the idea for twttr, which you most probably know as Twitter.
Kevin met Jack Dorsey at ODEO, who is the CEO (former) of Twitter until Elon Musk.
9–5 Jobs to Burbn
Since Kevin had met a millionaire like Mark, he had a dream of starting his own company, but he was afraid and decided to go for Google.
However, this leads him to Mike Krieger, prompting Kevin to quit his 9–5 after 4 whole years of working there. They raised money for a check-in app called burbn. This app completely failed and flopped. However, Kevin and Mike learned something from a feature on burbn: photo-sharing.
They scrapped all the other features in burbn and only kept photo sharing in there. Since it was an instant telegram, the name became: Instagram.
Instant Success
This app instantly became a success, so by 2012, they started making nearly $30B, and Jack Dorsey wanted to invest in Instagram and more importantly, buy it for 500M dollars.
Kevin once again declined the offer of a CEO, but he decided to go with another one: Mark Zuckerberg, who offered him $1B for his Instagram. Kevin accepted for a few reasons:
- If they said no, Facebook would just make their own Instagram.
- Facebook had enough servers to help Instagram’s failing ones.
- Instagram wasn’t tied to Facebook as much: Kevin and Mike could continue operating Instagram, just within Facebook.
- They were tied in another way: stocks. If Facebook grew, so did Instagram’s valuation.
Hacker Culture Looms
After the buyout by Facebook, people at Instagram had to ensure that they didn’t have the same “hacker culture” as Facebook, a disliked company for wanting growth and retention at all costs.
They failed.
Once Instagram was bought, a change was made to their Terms of Service: Instagram had the right to licence and sell all of your photos. A clear failure at keeping their culture strengthened.
Another problem loomed: SnapChat. At that time, Instagram users’ pressure to have a perfect photo led to a dip in people posting photos. This led to Zuckerberg trying to buy Snapchat for $3B, and he ended up failing.
This led to Zuckerberg insisting on Kevin to create Instagram Stories; a clear betrayal of the foundation of Instagram. On September 24th, 2018, Kevin and Mike left their own companies.
Fascinating
This story is incredibly fascinating because this is a story of betrayal, faith, and failures. Instagram has had its lows, and its highs, and it was fun.
It still is. I love Instagram, and I’m probably not going to stop using it, but this story isn’t just tech: it is politics, and deeper than that, emotions.
Hello there! I just want to tell you that I’ve done my best to remain unbiased. All I have done here is provide people with an account of what has happened on Instagram. Please consider following me for more stories or leaving a clap if you liked the story.
