Where Data Tells the Story
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It’s been 15 years since the launch of Instagram, one of the world's biggest social media platforms. The social networking giant has come a long way since October 6, 2010, when it was founded by Stanford University graduates Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger as a photo sharing app called Burbn in San Francisco, California. By December that year, the app, now rebranded as the catchy Instagram - a joining of “instant” and “telegram” - had piqued the interest of some one million users. The platform continued to gain popularity, jumping up to 10 million users as of September the following year.
After Instagram was bought by Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta (formerly Facebook), for $1 billion in 2012, it continued to snowball towards world fame. By December 2014, the platform counted 300 million monthly active users. And as of September 2025, it had more than three billion.
The app has evolved in various ways over the years, with various functions coming and going. Among some of the most notable technical milestones was the addition of the popular video function in June 2013, paving the way for Stories in 2016, a feature that allows users to share photos and videos that automatically disappear from their profile 24 hours after posting.
In November that year, Instagram then introduced its Live video broadcasting feature, enabling users to stream their videos in real-time and to interact with their audience through comments and reactions. In 2018, the company introduced Instagram TV, or IGTV, as a standalone app, offering video features for long-form, vertical videos that lasted up to an hour. This was later shut down however and instead integrated into the Instagram app, as “part of [its] efforts to make video as simple as possible to discover and create.”
The Reels feature officially launched in August 2020, as Instagram’s answer to TikTok, focused on short, entertaining videos. Users were able to record and edit 15-second multi-clip videos with audio and different effects, which could be shared on their Feed. Since then, Instagram has gradually increased the length of videos that are able to be made, rising to 60 seconds in July 2021, 90 seconds in 2022 and 180 seconds in January 2025.
Instagram’s algorithms have also shifted over the years. Where the app started out using a chronological feed, this shifted in 2016 to using an algorithm to sort posts, driven by metrics such as engagement through comments, likes and shares, as well as the post timeliness and user’s relationship with the account that posted the content. Multiple algorithms have continued to change, although the details of how exactly were not made public.
While Instagram fosters creativity, supports business marketing, and helps users stay connected, it has been widely criticized for harming mental health, especially among youth, by promoting lifestyle comparisons and excessive screen time.