It may be hard to fathom but Instagram celebrated its 10th birthday this week!
In the last 10 years a hell of a lot has happened on the app. An egg got more likes than Kylie Jenner, Jennifer Anniston broke the internet with her Friends selfie, and it continues to the birthplace of countless influencers.
It is almost impossible to imagine a world without Instagram!
To mark this milestone, here at Rumour Mill we have compiled a list of 10 facts you may or may not know about one of the world’s most popular apps.
- The first person who posted a photo on Instagram was Kevin Systrom (born in December 30, 1983). The Co-founder of Instagram posted a photo with a stray dog in Mexico on July 16, 2010 with description “test” and this photo still exists on his profile: https://www.instagram.com/p/C
- Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012. At that time, Instagram had just 13 employees. Now Instagram is valued well over $100 billion and is about one-fifth of Facebook’s market cap.
- As of October 5, 2020, the most-liked photo on Instagram is a picture of an egg, posted by the account @world_record_egg. It was created to beat the previous record of a Kylie Jenner post. The picture currently has over 54 million likes.
- In the three years since its launch, Stories has become a huge part of what makes Instagram so popular. With half a billion people using Stories every single day, it’s clear that Stories are an important channel for brands.
- Instagram users will spend an average of 28 minutes per day on the platform in 2020. In comparison, time spent on Facebook is slightly decreasing. Instagram saw more time spent per day than Snapchat for the first time in 2019.
- Selena Gomez was the first person in the world to reach 100 million followers. This has since increased to 194million. If she were a country and her followers were that country’s population, it would be the 12th most populous country in the world. One of her most popular pictures ever was for Coca Cola.
- The top ten most popular hashtags in general are: #love #instagood #photooftheday #tbt #beautiful #cute #me #selfie #tagforlikes #happy #followme. Photos that utilise hashtags get 38% more engagement than those who upload without using hashtags.
- How-to tutorials are the most popular form of Instagram video content. Followed by behind-the-scenes posts, interviews, and news coverage. Buzzfeed’s Tasty videos may be the best-known example of how-to videos on Instagram.
- The most popular face filter on Insta Stories are the puppy ears. This is followed by the sleep mask, bunny ears, love with the heart-shaped darts, and koala ears. Seems like we all want to look like animals on our stories…
- If you thought that Instagram advertising only appeared in the last couple of years, here is an interesting fact! Advertising was introduced in October 2013 but only for select brands! In 2015 it became accessible for all users. Engagement on Instagram is 10 times higher than Facebook, 54 times higher than Pinterest, and 84 times higher than Twitter.
Happy Birthday Instagram…where will we all be in 2030!
Bonus fact: Instagram embraced its potential as a news source this year, employing its ubiquity to distribute coronavirus prevention techniques through a new call-out at the top of its home screen feed. In some countries, Instagram displayed a link to information from the World Health Organisation and local health ministries, along with a message like this: “Help Prevent the Spread of Coronavirus: See the latest information from the World Health Organization so you can help prevent the spread of COVID-19.”
Instagram also prevented users from searching for COVID-19-related augmented reality effects unless they were made in partnership with legitimate health organisations. This helped limit the spread of disinformation or insensitive jokes about the virus.