The Internet is developing literally every second. People’s life is increasingly being transferred to the network. Now they are friends and socialize, work and have fun. As of January 1, 2018, there were 3.8 billion internet users. And although more than half of the content of the network is created by robots and special programs, people are very active and sociable.
There are more than 400 social networks on the Internet. A dozen leaders and hundreds of one-day sites have been identified, which are being replaced by new ones. Such a newcomer in 2010 was Instagram.
How the idea of Instagram was born
It was conceived as an application for processing photos. The founders of Instagram realized that they would earn a little. They already had unsuccessful projects, so only his uniqueness could make another startup profitable.
At that time, Facebook had already shown itself as a successful commercial project. And the creators of Instagram decided to connect a photo editor with a social network.
They borrowed the brevity of messages from Twitter and allowed users to share their life with photos. At the same time, all photos are downloaded instantly from a mobile and processed to the taste of the owner.
Creating an account, uploading photos, comments and likes - all this has already happened. The founders of Instagram achieved originality when they gave everyone the opportunity to create on the Internet the illusion of their exemplary life, perfect relaxation, perfect appearance, and impeccable relationships.
The author of the idea of "Instagram"
The entrepreneurial guy Kevin Systrom came up with the project. He was born in a family that was able to pay his son an excellent education. Even at school, he took up computer science. At the university, the young man studied as a programmer, which did not prevent him from leaving for Europe to study the art of photography.
All his hobbies attracted little to a brilliant business idea, and Kevin was simply obsessed with the desire to open his gold mine. He always did something, was looking for his niche in the information market. Apparently, his mom, a marketer, exerted her influence and helped to understand where to move. Assessing his strengths and using the accumulated experience, the future founder of Instagram tried to combine photography, social networks and determining the location of users. So the Burbn app was born.
Creators Duo
Despite the frivolous name, Systrom received a grand of 500 thousand dollars for the development of the project with the condition to find a co-founder.
The co-founder was a young man from Brazil, Mike Krieger. At that time he was working on a similar project - a communication site, only no one gave him a grand on it. So Mike easily accepted Kevin’s offer to unite.
As soon as Burbn began to acquire the main features, it became clear that he was not much different from competitors. To stand out, Kevin suggested focusing on the ease of sharing photos and making the app as convenient as possible for mobile devices.
As a result, Kevin and Mike began work anew. The creative crisis continued until Systrom understood how to increase the flow of photos from users - we need a program that instantly corrects pictures at the request of the owner. The better people and their lives look in the photo, the more you want to brag about them. As soon as the new application was supplemented with filters, it became clear that the guys tried not in vain.
Birth of Instagram
The application received the name "Instagram" ("Instant Message") and was put up for download in early October 2010. In the first month, it was installed on more than a million mobile devices, and popularity continued to grow. Everyone became interested in the founder of Instagram: who is this brilliant guy?
For the next year and a half, Sistrom, Krieger and their growing team lived with laptops in their hands, because the servers were in constant overload mode, and they were ready to restore them in the event of a failure around the clock.
1 billion deal
When in 2012, Mark Zuckerberg suggested they sell the project to make it part of his empire, the media rushed to discuss this news. He knew Kevin before when he worked on the Facebook photo service. Then Mark did not manage to make the independent Systrom a part of his team, now he was ready to pay $ 1 billion for his finished project. The founders of "Instagram" received 70% of this amount on Facebook shares. So they monetized the project, which they never learned to earn on.
With Instagram, Zuckerberg did the same as with all purchased projects - he allowed him to develop further in the previous composition under the leadership of the former owners.
Then they released a mobile version of Instagram for the Android OS. In the summer of 2012, a program update was released, which helped to attach the application to Facebook. It is not surprising that this year Instagram outstripped Twitter in popularity.
Even the founder of Instagram did not expect such progress. In Russia, integration with the VKontakte social network occurred in 2013.
Three well-known facts about Kevin Systrom
- Kevin was not a genius and did not make his way from the bottom. In his biography, too, there is nothing heroic. A boy from a prosperous family who received a good education began to earn on his hobby and received money from investors. There were enough such programmers in both Apple and Facebook. Only he earned on his project 1 billion in 2 years. Everyone knows how he did it, but they cannot repeat it.
- The founder of Instagram Kevin Systrom loved to take pictures. At first he used the Kodak apparatus, then, while studying in France, he changed it to Helga, which produced pictures with soft focus. Both cameras took square photographs. Therefore, the first photo editors and filters of Systrom were designed specifically for this format. Later, Instagram for 5 years stubbornly ignored other proportions of images and surrendered only in 2015. At that time, half of the pictures posted on the Internet were taken on smartphones, and they were rectangular.
- The creator and owner of Instagram wanted to start a successful business and began to study this at Stanford. Through this program, he met the future creator of Twitter, Jack Dorsey. Then they worked together on Google.
How to make Instagram make a profit
Zuckerberg’s attempt to get income from the use of posted photos in 2012 failed - users were offended and began to delete their pages. Only in 2013, after a serious work of lawyers, a compromise was found, and users also got the opportunity to earn on their photos. In 2018, about a billion people have Instagram pages, half of them make money by advertising someone else’s business or promote their own.
Founders Care
In October 2018, the founders of Instagram announced their resignation. According to Kevin, he and Zuckerberg are parting friends. Systrom and Krieger lasted for six whole years, developing at full capacity a business that was already a stranger. They have always been excellent organizers and creative personalities, while being very flexible and peace-loving partners.
Unreasonable reason for leaving
They created a functional platform that they liked for the lack of advertising, tireless short posts and the ability to embellish their reality. Facebook added all its users to it and made it as popular as possible. It's time for the owner to earn money on a promoted social network and improve it in a commercial direction.
This limited the creative Systrom and Krieger and made them "traitors of their creation" in the eyes of the fans. Therefore, the founders of Instagram leave to start something new, unique and valuable. And Zuckerberg is not holding them back - they are breaking up with billionaires.
Newspapers began to trumpet that the founders of Instagram were leaving, and without them the project would die. But most likely, this social network is waiting for a new growth in popularity. Now this is the best place to make money on the Internet, and users will not leave it.
How to make money on Instagram
It has become a cozy and comfortable place. Instagram has many useful features and new ones appear regularly. After integration with Facebook, it became possible to do business, and people came here with money. They came to give them for quality work.
The created account is filled with information about yourself, photos of your work or goods for sale, subscribers who are interested are added. So find future customers or buyers.
Having gained this experience, you can begin to create and promote accounts for sale or receive money for the promotion and administration of someone else’s page. Some began to earn on advertising, likes, participate in affiliate programs.
There is another area that works best on Instagram - auction sites. These are specially designed for bidding pages with a large number of subscribers. The more popular the site, the more the owner asks for its services. But here you can sell a worthwhile and unique thing much more expensive than through an ad indicating the price.
Why professional photographers love Instagram
When ordinary users post photos from holidays, holidays or after visiting a beauty salon, they broadcast their lifestyle, passed through filters and embellished to the maximum. Such pictures have neither artistic nor material value.
But professional photographers post really high-quality work here. Staged photo shoots look especially profitable. The author exhibits his works and indicates for the inhabitants of which region they are intended. So the photographer finds his new customers, and those who want to order high-quality pictures can appreciate his professionalism, find out prices and read reviews.
Still here they sell their photographic works or receive orders for the illustration of articles or advertisements. At the same time, buyers of advertising images live in different parts of the world. This is a chance for the photographer to become world famous and in demand.
What is bad Instagram
Any phenomenon has its own army of opponents and supporters. Not everyone likes Instagram, although many of its ill-wishers are not even registered there. This is a criticism on the principle of "I have not seen it myself, but I categorically condemn it."
There are fans of this social network who are unhappy with the influence of Instagram on society. They take advantage of all its positive aspects and sensibly judge shortcomings. Their opinion can be trusted when they say that the application "helps" to become a regular patient of a psychologist:
- Photos have nothing to do with real life. Everything is too perfect here: food, appearance, relationships, lifestyle. Life problems are retouched or cut out of pictures. By deceiving others, photo owners become ashamed of their reality and lie to themselves.
- The articles here have relevant headlines and useless content. They create the illusion of the reader that he is aware of all the things on the planet, distracting from the problems that really need to be addressed. For example, everyone was excited that the founders of Instagram left the company, and is it really important to spend time and energy discussing it?
- The ostentatious lifestyle of others brings false values to consciousness. An ideal figure, vacation abroad, a chic apartment, gourmet food from a restaurant - it becomes a must have for subscribers of a social network star. These “right” goals in life are hard to achieve. Disappointment makes people miserable.
- Many post their photos and are waiting for approval from unfamiliar subscribers. They gradually begin to adapt to the tastes of others - to repeat and develop what they like and for what they have received negative comments. As a result, an inferiority complex and dependence on the opinions of others are acquired.
- Life outside of Instagram is boring. Only by turning on the application, the user feels "at home". Familiar faces, your own page, the use of functionality to the maximum, fresh gossip about the stars - life is in full swing here. This is how dependence on staying on social networks develops.
What else to expect from Instagram
Without regard to criticism, employees believe that they do for the benefit of users. They improve the resource every day, although the founders left Instagram. In the work, they are guided by the wishes of users, new technologies and commercial goals of the owners. Each next version strives for excellence and makes the previous one hopelessly outdated.
Soon on Instagram, users will be able to:
- overlay text on the video;
- more reliable to protect your account from hacking;
- Find out the complete statistics of visits and page views;
- automatically delete a post if the author changes his mind and finds it too frank;
- save to your mobile photo and video from your and someone else’s profile;
- delete negative comments about yourself.
All this will again increase the number of accounts, the number of photos, videos and posts, help to advertise more products and make users and owners of the project richer. Yes, the founders of Instagram left the company, but now their brainchild will grow and develop, headed by Facebook managers.