Instagram (Meta)

Kevin Systrom originally built an app called Burbn — a location check-in service heavily inspired by Foursquare. It had too many features and users were confused. Systrom and his co-founder Mike Krieger stripped everything out except one feature that users actually loved: photo sharing with filters. They renamed it Instagram and launched on October 6, 2010. It hit one million users in three months.

On April 9, 2012, Facebook acquired Instagram for approximately $1 billion in cash and stock. Instagram had 13 employees, no revenue, and had been operating for 551 days. The deal was negotiated personally between Mark Zuckerberg and Kevin Systrom over eight days. Zuckerberg later said he was afraid Instagram would become what Facebook could have been if it had focused on mobile earlier.

Instagram launched video in June 2013 — a direct response to Twitter's Vine app, which had become popular for short-form video. Vine CEO Dom Hofmann described the launch as "a tiger pouncing on a cat." Instagram's video feature, backed by Facebook's resources, was more polished than Vine. Vine shut down in January 2017.

In September 2018, both Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger resigned from Instagram simultaneously. Neither gave detailed public explanations, but subsequent reporting revealed growing friction with Zuckerberg over Instagram's autonomy and direction. Zuckerberg had begun integrating Instagram more deeply into Facebook's infrastructure, overriding decisions the founders had made. By 2018, Instagram was worth an estimated $100 billion — 100 times what Facebook had paid for it.

When TikTok exploded in 2019 and 2020, Instagram responded by launching Reels — a near-identical short video format. Instagram's head Adam Mosseri announced that Instagram was "no longer a photo-sharing app." Long-term users were furious. The original founders, watching from the outside, were reportedly horrified. Instagram had been built around the beauty of a single photograph. It was now competing with TikTok.