Instagram: The Untold Story

The World’s biggest Photosharing platform or One of the most popular social media platforms Instagram which was first released in 2010 A.D.

Coming to this date it is the world’s most-used social media app with around 1 Billion users and it generates around US $20 Billion in revenue every year.

Today, we are going to talk about how Instagram became one of the biggest social media businesses in the world and the hidden dark truth that you guys didn’t know.

While opening the Instagram app you will see “Meta”. Meta is one of the biggest tech companies in the world whose Current CEO is Mark Zuckerberg.

In the story of Instagram’s rise and fall, there always comes the big name that is Mark Zuckerberg.

The story begins, In 2006 A.D. Facebook is only available for those selected colleges/campuses and universities. But Mark Zuckerberg wants to spread his technology not just in a limited place but worldwide. His vision only may come true if photo-sharing features are added to his app.

So he visits Standford University to hire a new developer who can make the kind of features that Mark looking for. Mark meets Kevin Systrom who is working on photography. Marks offered him

“Work for me I will pay you a good salary and a good position”

but Kevin refused to work because his mentor said that In the future photo-sharing feature could be good and Facebook is not a good choice for him that’s why?

Kevin Systrom was always very passionate about photos and photography so he went to Italy to learn more about them. In Italy, he learned how photo is made, what is photo filters, how they work, and their types.

He gets to know more about photos and how people are clicking photos and sharing them on social media.

1 year later he returned to the USA and continued his Graduation at Standford University. He worked as an intern in a small tech company called Odeo( Today’s “Twitter or X“).

Kevin was very talented and hard-working in his college life. Seeing this the CEO of that company asked him to work there because Twitter is becoming big but Kevin didn’t believe that.

After Graduation Kevin goes to work for Google company. Where he is in charge of Gmail, Google Sheets, docs, etc. Spending his whole 2 years in the world’s biggest tech company, he thinks he didn’t get what he wants or what he values so he resigns from the post.

 

Kevin stays unemployed for 1 whole year. He spends his time learning mobile development, coding, and programming.

After one year he made a mobile app having features to share photos on any platform. It was called “burbon“. This name is taken from the whiskey brand “bourbon“. Although the name is similar they are not related to each other.

Kevin developed the app but he does not have any budget to spend or to advertise the app. So he meets some investors at a party and manages to convince one of them to invest in his app.

The investor gives $50,000 to Kevin for his app. After hearing this another investor gave around $250,000. And again the first investor makes his investment money $50,000 to $250,000.

Now Kevin has a budget of 1/2 Million US dollars with his app prototype. Kevin needs to work harder to make his app more reachable to normal people for that he needs a strong team. So, he decides to hire some members for his projects.

Mike Krieger: His first app tester and co-student at Standford University. Kevin takes him as a co-founder and the other two app users as employees.

 

Everything is going smoothly with budget, team, and time but the users are less than 100. So Kevin tries to take a survey on mass people to know about his app, and what they think about it.

Firstly he asks his girlfriend(current wife) to use his app and give an honest opinion. But she refuses to use this app because she said that her photos are not as good as her friends so she won’t want to share photos with anyone so this app is useless to her.

She added,

“If you add some features where you can apply the filter in the photo in real”.

That sentence directly hit his mind and he discussed that matter with his team. Kevin and his team focus on that topic and with their knowledge of photography and Photoshop they make it happen.

After that, Kevin came up with a new name for his app Instagram(instant telegram) and Offical launched on Oct. 6, 2010, A.D.

Kevin said in an interview that after the launch of the app, within 24 hours app hit over 25,000+ users and after the month they have over 1 Million users in their app. In the previous days of Facebook, it took over a year to reach that number. Instagram became more and more popular after celebrities also got into it.

That time Justin Beiber’s one post made the Instagram server crash

Instagram is making new records and records for getting more and more users but they are still in pre-revenue. Kevin said that on the previous day, he paid his employees by using investors’ money. Another important part is they haven’t established their advertisement platform so they are not earning much but the user or the celebrity is taking money for promoting a product.

“Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi are charging per post over approx.$2-3 Million”

“Many female entrepreneurs are making their business from Instagram”

Now Instagram is strong enough to get attention in the world market. Many businessmen are looking into it. One day Kevin received a phone call from the CEO of Twitter and he invited him to dinner.

In the meeting, the CEO offers Kevin X amount of money to sell his company to him. After giving second thoughts having said no to him and returns to his residence.

Within a couple of days, rumors of Kevin wanting to sell his company go into the ears of Mark Zuckerberg. Kevin received a call from Mark Zuckerberg.

Mark said, “Hello, I just heard about your story with Twitter and I’m not interested in that I will get straight to the point…… I want to buy your company for $1 Billion”.

After hearing this Kevin was shocked and said “I will discuss it with my team and will contact you”.

Kevin discussed with his co-founder and stated a condition to Mark that he doesn’t want to lose his position and control over his company until he resigns. After hearing this Mark accepts that deal.

Now the ownership of the company is already in the Marks’ hands.

Everything is going okay until 1 year, after that marks Influence is interpreting the operation of Instagram. Marks wants to apply the push notification on the app so that It can be used as advertising for products to increase revenues.

Kevin refuses to do that but at the end of the day, Mark is the owner.

The tension on Instagram is increasing. Many users are complaining about the situation on Instagram. Also, the team members are heating up from the pressure.

Kevin Systorm has decided to get a vacation to avoid the circumstances so he goes on vacation for months. at the end of the vacation, he extended the vacation and took a long leave but that was no solution to the overall situation he got.

so he decided to come back. After returning from vacation he directly resigns from the position of CEO.

September 24 2018

Within a week his cofounder also resigns from the position of the co-founder of the company. Everyone (employee) is so sucked cause those who developed the program are leaving the company. It was the biggest joke they faced in their lifetime. but it was the reality.