Three
years ago today Instagram was launched. Its arrival in Apple's app store was
accompanied by a brief note outlining the company's vision: to make mobile
photographs "fast, simple and beautiful".
There
was little sign that October 6 2010 marked the birth of an app that would be
embraced by some of the world's most powerful people, be sold in a deal worth
an estimated $1 billion and threaten to transform the nature of photography.
Today
Instagram has more than 150 millions users across the globe. The app's ability
to add retro chic to digital photos through filters that distort colour and
create a Polaroid effect has seen it adopted by countless celebrities.
Michelle
Obama has an account, as does President Bashar al-Assad. Paul McCartney has
launched new music through the site and Andy Murray personally thanked fans
after winning Wimbledon with an Instagram video.
So
when on July 22 this year Buckingham Palace announced the birth of Prince
George – the future king of England – it passed with little comment that
Instagram was one of just a handful of websites used to break the good news to
the world.
But
how did we get here? How did the brainchild of two geeky graduates from Stanford
University become a billion-dollar business worthy of the Royals?
The
clues to Instagram's phenomenal success can be found in that original blog
post, written as the app first went live back in the autumn of 2010.
Stated
in the note are the three common criticisms of mobile phone photos which
Instragram's founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger wanted to address.
The
first read simply “my mobile photos look lame”. The proliferation of
smartphones had put photography at the fingertips of the masses, but there were
still few ways to hide the amateurism of the photographer. Instagram launched
with 11 preset filters that allowed people to add retro-chic to their snaps
with brightened colours or fading effects.
Next
was the complaint that it is "a pain to share to all the friends I care
about”. A simple solution here – Instgram was designed to easily link up with
Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Tumblr so photos could be posted in a second.
Finally
Instagram wanted to get round the uploading problem. "Photos take forever
to upload and viewing them is slow" was the way they phrased it. Hooking
up mobile phones to computers or attempting to upload snaps over shoddy
internet connection was a common frustration. The solution was to make each
file tiny.
"The
magic of fast uploads is simply that we're not uploading full resolution,"
Kevin Systrom would explain later. "Instead of uploading 3MB we upload
60kb. There's a huge difference in reliability when you're dealing with small
data."
The
inspiration for all this was old Polaroid photos. Polaroid did to traditional
print photography what Instagram would do to digital cameras – allow consumers
to get instant access to their pictures rather than waiting for hours or days.
For
Polaroid this was done by developing a photo on the spot; for Instagram it was
the ability to share a photo within seconds.
Source: Telegraph
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