Instagram Launches as a Photo App for the iPhone

In March 2010, Kevin Systrom secured 500,000 dollars in seed funding from Baseline Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz while developing an early mobile check-in project called Burbn. Working alongside software engineer Mike Krieger in San Francisco, the founders found that their prototype overlapped heavily with the features of existing location services such as Foursquare. Observing that photo sharing had emerged as the most engaging element among users, Systrom and Krieger decided to strip away extraneous mechanisms and refocus the application entirely on mobile photography, creating the name Instagram as a blend of instant camera and telegram.

The engineering of the platform was tailored specifically to the constraints and capabilities of contemporary smartphones, debuting through the App Store on October 6, 2010. Echoing the square prints of Kodak Instamatic and Polaroid cameras, Instagram confined every photo to a square, one-to-one frame. Users could apply built-in digital filters designed to alter tone and contrast, add a location to posts, and connect their profiles to existing social networks to broadcast content across multiple services simultaneously.