Inside Instagram, the story of Instagram’s early days
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Instagram’s founder, who loves DDS, photography and whiskey, had dinner with Zuckerberg as a junior in 2005, when Zuckerberg invited him to intern at Facebook. Yes, Facebook in 2005. Then he chose — to study photography in Florasa, Italy, for a year.
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When Strom returned to the US, he took an internship at Odeo (which spawned Twitter) at the age of 22. He met Dorsey, a 29-year-old founder of Twitter, and they hit it off because they shared a love of photography, music and coffee. Dorsey found few programmers in Silicon Valley to discuss this.
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By the time Strom graduated from college, Facebook had five million users, and he realized he was missing something. He reached out to one of Zuckerberg’s operators, who later stopped talking to him. He also had the option of going to Twitter, where he stayed in touch with CEO Dorsey and used the site frequently. But he decided, “No one’s going to use this,” and went to work for Google.
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After missing two early behemoths in a row, he got so bored at Google that he started teaching younger colleagues how to pull flowers with the company’s coffee machine. When he was 25, he decided he needed to do something, but instead of giving up his salary, he took a job as a product manager for a small startup and spent evenings and weekends in cafes researching his product.
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Before Instagram, Strom made a product called Burbn, which stands for bourbon. There were only a few dozen people using it, mostly his friends and friends of friends, and it was just a web version, no App, because he didn’t know how to make apps.
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Strom, a strong networker, raised $500,000 for himself and $25,000 from Dorsey early on. But when the money ran out and Burbn wasn’t the “right” product, he and co-founder + tech partner Kriger thought about Burbn’s many features and decided to focus on photos.
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The first prototype of Instagram was Scotch, a close cousin of Bourbon. He was vacationing with his girlfriend in Mexico when she thought he should add a filter to the App. So he — he went back to his hotel and went online and studied how to write filters. He and Kriger settled on the App’s name, Instant + Telegram = Instagram.
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Instagram started out as iOS only because Kriger was better at iOS programming. Strom is a great networker, dealing with investors and the press while controlling the look and feel of products. While Kriger was behind the scenes, solving complex procedural problems, he and Strom had no interest in each other’s work — so it worked
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They selected the first users of the App very carefully, and they were all good photographers, especially those with a lot of Followers on Twitter. In its early days, Instagram mainly relied on sharing to other social platforms. The App is still in Beta and has not been officially released. Twitter CEO Dorsey has become an avid user and ambassador for Instagram, where he has 1.6 million followers.
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Instagram was launched on October 6, 2010 and became an instant hit, with 25,000 people using it in the first day and 100,000 in a week. Six weeks later, the number arrived — 2 million.
Understanding Instagram stories
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Taste. Taste is everything. The early design and texture of Instagram, which stood out in the App Store, was the most important part of what impressed users. This is due to the fact that Strom is not a technical programmer, but a young urbanist who likes photography, coffee, travel and whiskey and cares about “lifestyle.”
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Famous universities. I didn’t mention that Strom graduated from Stafford University, and because of his ability to communicate, as a student he spent time eating with Zuckerberg and staying on good terms with Dorsey. He could reach out to other investors through his Google colleagues, and he could call Facebook’s senior cTO to offer help when users flooded the server. And the relationship with Dorsey, CEO of Twitter (personal relationship + investment relationship), made Instagram almost free of a penny, just at the stage of Twitter’s rise, get the continuous promotion of Super V Dorsey (this is also corresponding to the last one, Dorsey is not hard push, I’m really addicted to Instagram).
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Timing. Instagram came out in an era when cell phone photography was terrible and basically just a picture. Instagram’s launch caters to people’s desire to turn photos into “works of art” with one click. But more important is the big time — Instagram’s launch coincided with the rise of the iPhone. Kriger could only deal with iOS programming, just in time for Instagram to be seen as a synonym for being a geek in the age of the amazing rise of the iPhone 4 and 4S. Later, the launch of Android version, and the rapid popularity of Android phones from 2011 to 2015, the super acceleration of the era (China also gave birth to today’s Toutiao, Meituan, Didi, etc.), Instagram almost took a ride on the fast train of era fission.
After reading the above, is there a kind of right time, right place and difficult to succeed feeling. But also consider:
1. Taste. Many people with good taste, but not necessarily choose the Internet, and even if the Internet field, taste is very good, luck is also very important. For example, tang Tea “Bytecshe”, a Chinese App at the same time, also had good taste. However, due to various reasons, it regrettably withdrew from the market.
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Famous universities. There are a lot of people who graduated from elite schools, who are good friends, and who socialize with various celebrities. But not everyone can make amazing photo-social products, and it’s possible to stop at sharing pictures of toasts on social networks.
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Timing. And if you think about it the other way around, the opportunity, in theory, is open to everyone. Strictly speaking, of course, not all the people, in theory to silicon valley or the Internet, many people are open, but not everyone is moving towards this time, most people would choose on the sidelines this time, watch the change of The Times quirky, then sighed, “I at that time, I wish…” – as at the moment, also seems to be difficult to have open toe. This moment is the future. The future is this moment.
My ideal product
I loved Instagram in its early days. I was using an Android phone at the time and tried the Android version the first time it came out. In 2014, as Instagram became inaccessible in China, I always hoped to create a similar product —
Clear design, pure photo display, large picture with white space.
A product that retains the greatest reverence for photo sharing in terms of aesthetic texture and functional restraint.
In 2015, I tried with my friends, but my ability was limited. On the Chinese Internet, the product never seemed to emerge, and Instagram was never directly accessible. There may have been some products later, but none of them had the texture of Insgtagram (oasis, etc.).
And 7 years later, I temporarily realized my idea through a small program, ^_^
Small program: FUTAKE
Welcome to scan code to try, or wechat search “FUTAKE” experience.
It is just launched now, so you need invitation code to register. Can be private message me, or through the registration page prompts to obtain ~
Afterword.
Science and technology serve human life.
We hope that with the advent of some products, ordinary life will become more interesting, not more anxious. In the use of the product, the aesthetic sense of pleasure, rather than irritability. You can swipe your phone and get inspiration into a smooth flow instead of chewing wax and sticking to your hand.
We hope to inspire a life scene full of joy and inspiration through a product.
Just as Apple and Starbucks are playing a role in the urban scene, so are many of the new brands emerging in China, such as Xi Cha. Products should make daily life more inspirational, more connected to your inspiration, each other happy.
Let beauty speed up the circulation, let life shine, let the world add new ideas.
Instagram, though, has become increasingly anxious, utilitarian and ad-heavy since it was acquired by Facebook. But Instagram is a great product that has left its own distinctive texture throughout the history of human Internet life.
Hopefully FUTAKE can also be a product that makes life more interesting and taste-driven, even if it only makes a small number of users happy on the phone screen, and makes a small number of users’ works perfectly displayed —
That’s the best little change we can make with technology in this era.
Life will be better
