Instagram is a photo and video sharing platform owned by Meta that has become one of the most important marketing channels for businesses. For custom web application development, the Instagram Graph API and Instagram Basic Display API enable developers to build features like social media management dashboards, content scheduling tools, influencer analytics platforms, and e-commerce integrations. The API allows reading user profiles, media, and insights data, as well as publishing content and managing comments programmatically. Businesses that rely on Instagram for marketing frequently need custom tools that go beyond what the native app provides.
Instagram was founded by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in 2010, but the app it became was not the app they originally built. Systrom first created a location-based check-in app called Burbn, inspired by his love of bourbon whiskey. Burbn had too many features and was not gaining traction, but Systrom noticed that users were primarily using one feature: the photo sharing capability. He and Krieger stripped the app down to just photos, filters, and sharing, and relaunched it as Instagram on October 6, 2010. The app gained 25,000 users on its first day. Facebook acquired Instagram for approximately $1 billion in April 2012, when the company had just 13 employees.
Kevin Systrom had no formal computer science training. He studied management science and engineering at Stanford, where he learned to code on his own by working nights and weekends. Before starting Instagram, he worked at Nextstop, a travel recommendation startup, and then at Google on products including Gmail and Google Reader. The iconic Instagram photo filters that helped the app go viral were inspired by Systrom's experience with Holga and Diana toy cameras during a study abroad trip to Florence, Italy. His photography professor had encouraged students to use these lo-fi cameras, and Systrom loved how the imperfections made ordinary photos look artistic.
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