Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer over
Speaker 1: at how Stuff Works and I love all things tech,
Speaker 1: and today I'm doing an episode based off a listener request.
Speaker 1: Nelly asked if I might do an episode about Instagram,
Speaker 1: And as it turns out, Instagram is a pretty interesting
Speaker 1: story and big enough so that it necessitates two episodes.
Speaker 1: So this is our first one talking about the birth
Speaker 1: of Instagram, and in our next episode will continue that story.
Speaker 1: But today we're gonna talk about an app that started
Speaker 1: off as a project that was meant to help a
Speaker 1: young fellow learn how to code, and it turned into
Speaker 1: a billion dollar acquisition deal. It's one of those Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley fairy tales that thousands of people chase after, but
Speaker 1: only a select few ever atchieve. So we're going to
Speaker 1: look at the Instagram story. And Instagram was designed by
Speaker 1: co founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, and they launched
Speaker 1: it in twenty ten. But our story will begin a
Speaker 1: little earlier than that, because you guys know, I love
Speaker 1: my history. So let's begin with a quick look at
Speaker 1: the backgrounds of the two founders. Kevin Systram was born
Speaker 1: in nineteen three in Holliston, Massachusetts, and his parents are
Speaker 1: Douglas Systrom, a vice president of human resources at the
Speaker 1: department store corporation t j X Companies, and his mother, Diane,
Speaker 1: is an executive in the marketing department at zip Car
Speaker 1: and has worked at other startups. He attended school and
Speaker 1: Conquered Massachusetts at a private school called Middlesex School, a
Speaker 1: boarding school or private school rather, which has fewer than
Speaker 1: four hundred students total, and, according to The New York Times,
Speaker 1: has nearly as many acres in land as it has
Speaker 1: students enrolled. So this is not a Rags to riches Dale.
Speaker 1: This is more of a rich's to Holy Cow, you
Speaker 1: are so incredibly rich tale for Mr Systram. In addition
Speaker 1: to his studies, he became a fan of the computer
Speaker 1: first person shooter game Doom too, And I talked about
Speaker 1: that in a couple of episodes way back when when
Speaker 1: I was covering things like it. The Doom franchise was
Speaker 1: one of a handful of games that launched level developer
Speaker 1: tools to the community. That meant that if you liked
Speaker 1: you could download those tools for yourself and you could
Speaker 1: actually build your own maps for the game system. Began
Speaker 1: to do that and also started studying computer programming, though
Speaker 1: really only more as an enthusiast. He would not pursue
Speaker 1: a degree in computer science after school. Systrom enrolled in
Speaker 1: Stanford University back in two thousand two, studying management science
Speaker 1: and engineering, so essentially the business classes over at Stanford,
Speaker 1: and Stanford was or still is actually located near Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley in California, and it's one of those places where
Speaker 1: ambitious students and grew investors often collide. They meet up
Speaker 1: with each other, they share ideas, and frequently students are
Speaker 1: looking to get recruited right off school into one of
Speaker 1: the big tech companies and uh they that ends up
Speaker 1: just being a rich pool of talent for companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft,
Speaker 1: and all the startups as well. Systrom spent a winter
Speaker 1: semester at Stanford in Florence. He actually went to Florence
Speaker 1: to study abroad, studying photography in particular, so he had
Speaker 1: an interest in photography long before Instagram was ever a thing,
Speaker 1: and at this time the iPhone had yet to appear
Speaker 1: and cell phone cameras were fairly primitive, so he was
Speaker 1: using actual film cameras and higher in digital cameras. In
Speaker 1: two thousand five, System became part of a special work
Speaker 1: study program called the Mayfield Fellows Program. Only twelve students
Speaker 1: are selected to do this each year at Stanford. Coincidentally,
Speaker 1: Mike Kreeger, the other co founder, would be selected for
Speaker 1: that same program in two thousand seven, though at that
Speaker 1: time sisterm and Krieger didn't really know each other that well.
Speaker 1: Systems work in the program led to an internship at
Speaker 1: a company called Odeo. Now I've covered Odio in the past,
Speaker 1: but here's a very quick refresher. Odio started out as
Speaker 1: a podcast focused company, not necessarily to produce podcasts, not
Speaker 1: a content creator, but rather as a way to publish podcasts,
Speaker 1: to subscribe to podcasts, and to follow podcasts. But Odio
Speaker 1: faced serious stiff competition, namely in iTunes, and ultimately the
Speaker 1: company would pivot to a different project that one of
Speaker 1: its employees had been working on for a while. It
Speaker 1: was a little messaging app that would let users send
Speaker 1: out a quick hundred forty character message to followers, and
Speaker 1: it would end up being called Twitter Systrom joined the
Speaker 1: Sigma New fraternity while he was at Stanford, and he
Speaker 1: gained a reputation for being creative and particularly talented and
Speaker 1: making visually appealing presentations and videos. During his senior year,
Speaker 1: he was encouraged to drop out of school and joined
Speaker 1: the Facebook team, which was just really getting started at
Speaker 1: the time. System actually turned down that offer after chatting
Speaker 1: with friends and concluding that Facebook was likely just a fad.
Speaker 1: I think things turned out all right for Sistrom in
Speaker 1: the end, however, even though he missed that opportunity. After
Speaker 1: graduating Stanford in two thousand and six, Systrom joined the
Speaker 1: ranks of Google in a move that many of his
Speaker 1: peers felt was a safe but somewhat uninspired decision. Google
Speaker 1: had already kind of established itself by two thousand six,
Speaker 1: it was no longer in that crazy start up phase,
Speaker 1: and System would stay with Google for about three years,
Speaker 1: leaving to join a company called next Stop. Next Up
Speaker 1: was founded by a former Google employee, or actually a
Speaker 1: couple of former Google employees, and it was a social
Speaker 1: travel recommendation site. The idea was the site would help
Speaker 1: people find fun things to do in new locations, so
Speaker 1: you could post about things that were interesting at different
Speaker 1: places in the world, and that's where we're gonna leave
Speaker 1: Mr Systram for the time being. We're gonna switch to
Speaker 1: the other co founder, Mike Krieger. Krieger was born in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six and sal Paulo, Brazil. His father is
Speaker 1: an executive who traveled extensively, and so Kreeger spent time
Speaker 1: in places like Portugal, Argentina, and the United States as
Speaker 1: he was growing up. He got his first computer when
Speaker 1: he was four years old, So yeah, this is also
Speaker 1: not a rag Store Riches story for Mr Kreeger. By
Speaker 1: the age of six, Kreeger was already starting to experiment
Speaker 1: with coding, mostly in an effort to enhance his gaming
Speaker 1: experience on his Windows based computer. So you're starting to
Speaker 1: sense a theme here, kids getting into coding through computer games.
Speaker 1: By the time he was a teenager, he was acting
Speaker 1: as a mentor to maintenance personnel in an after school
Speaker 1: education program at his high school. So he would go
Speaker 1: attend high school and afterwards he would help teach people
Speaker 1: how to develop computers skills so that they could get
Speaker 1: better jobs. It was kind of cool. When he turned eighteen,
Speaker 1: he was accepted to Stanford University, and that was in
Speaker 1: two thousand four. Kriegers major was in symbolic Systems, with
Speaker 1: a focus on human computer interaction. That discipline combines elements
Speaker 1: not just of technology, but also psychology and several other
Speaker 1: important movers and shakers in the tech world graduated with
Speaker 1: similar degrees, and as I mentioned earlier, Krieger, like Systrom,
Speaker 1: was part of the Mayfield Fellows program, so he was
Speaker 1: also one of those twelve students. While in college, Krieger
Speaker 1: interned with Microsoft. He would work on power Point as
Speaker 1: a project manager. He also interned at a company called
Speaker 1: fox Marks, which creates a browser add on that allows
Speaker 1: users to synchronize passwords and bookmarks across multiple computers and
Speaker 1: over there he served as a software developer, and after
Speaker 1: he graduated Stanford, Krieger went on to work for a
Speaker 1: company called me Bo. Me Bo was a web based
Speaker 1: instant messaging provider as well as something of a social network.
Speaker 1: So in early System is that next stop, which would
Speaker 1: later be acquired by Facebook, and Krieger was at me Bow,
Speaker 1: which in two thousand twelve would be acquired by Google,
Speaker 1: and System was working on a little side project since
Speaker 1: two thousand nine that Krieger got a chance to try
Speaker 1: out because the two knew of each other, but at
Speaker 1: that point they hadn't really worked together. And that sets
Speaker 1: the ground for the predecessor for Instagram, which I'll talk
Speaker 1: about in just a second, But first let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break to thank our sponsor. So before we went
Speaker 1: to the break, I mentioned that System had been working
Speaker 1: on a project since two thousand nine. That project was
Speaker 1: called Bourbon, but it was spelled b U r b
Speaker 1: N because it's an app and apps hate vowels, I guess,
Speaker 1: and Bourbon is apparently System's favorite drink, and he was
Speaker 1: working on it over the weekends when he wasn't doing
Speaker 1: his normal work either at Google or then later at
Speaker 1: Next Stop, and it was a bit of an odd beast.
Speaker 1: Systrom had aspirations of launching his own app and potentially
Speaker 1: his own company, and Bourbon was really the where he
Speaker 1: was cutting his teeth on app development because that really
Speaker 1: wasn't what he had studied. He knew about the power
Speaker 1: of apps, and he was convinced that mobile was going
Speaker 1: to be the biggest thing moving forward. This was in
Speaker 1: when Mobile was already doing quite well and Bourbon was
Speaker 1: in many ways a project that System was using to
Speaker 1: learn how to develop apps, how to use HTML five,
Speaker 1: and what sort of features users would actually want. Now,
Speaker 1: remember that while System was interested in all this, he
Speaker 1: still didn't have that degree in computer science or anything
Speaker 1: like that, and so Bourbon ended up being kind of
Speaker 1: a hydra, a mini headed creature that was trying to
Speaker 1: do a lot of things all at once. For one thing,
Speaker 1: it was a check in service, similar to what four
Speaker 1: Square used to be. You could visit a place and
Speaker 1: use the app to check in. He let your friends
Speaker 1: know you had visited. You could make recommendations to friends,
Speaker 1: and you could plan for future get togethers at specific spots,
Speaker 1: which would earn you points in a sort of gamified
Speaker 1: element in the app. System had cited the social network
Speaker 1: game Mafia Wars as an influence on some of the
Speaker 1: app design, and you could upload photos to the app
Speaker 1: and share those with your friends as well. Krieger was
Speaker 1: an early user of Bourbon, and Systram had conversations with
Speaker 1: the Krieger focusing on ways to enhance the app's features
Speaker 1: and make things better. Meanwhile, System continued life in Silicon Valley,
Speaker 1: which included going to networking events and to try to
Speaker 1: make connections with other entrepreneurs and developers. At one such
Speaker 1: event hosted by a startup called Hunch, Systram met a
Speaker 1: guy named Steve Anderson who was the founder of Baseline Ventures,
Speaker 1: which is an investment firm. Anderson looked at a prototype
Speaker 1: build of Bourbon and agreed to invest in the development
Speaker 1: of the app to the tune of two fifty dollars
Speaker 1: is a pretty big of agreement. He also recommended System
Speaker 1: that he find a collaborator to work with more closely
Speaker 1: and not just become a personal echo chamber. In March,
Speaker 1: System decided to pursue Bourbon as an actual entrepreneurial opportunity,
Speaker 1: and he quit his job at next Stop, which was
Speaker 1: a pretty easy decision to make, especially after Mark Andresen
Speaker 1: added to that initial investment with two fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 1: of his own, which brought that launch investment up to
Speaker 1: half a million dollars. And Systrom was able to convince
Speaker 1: Kreeger a couple of months later in May to quit
Speaker 1: his job at me Bo and come work with him
Speaker 1: on the project, and so the two co founders joined forces.
Speaker 1: They set up shop at a place called dog Patch Labs,
Speaker 1: which was a company that offered up shared office space
Speaker 1: for the startup tech companies in the Bay Area. Companies
Speaker 1: that did not yet have an office of their own
Speaker 1: could rent out space at dog Patch Labs, and before
Speaker 1: long the two decided that they weren't really on the
Speaker 1: right track. They had come to the conclusion that Bourbon
Speaker 1: was just too similar to four Square, which was already
Speaker 1: an established app at that time, and they also felt
Speaker 1: the service was just too busy and cluttered. It had
Speaker 1: so many features that was a little confusing as to
Speaker 1: what it was intended to do. And thus, in June
Speaker 1: they decided to engage in the great tradition of app development,
Speaker 1: the pivot. And I mentioned a pivot a little bit earlier,
Speaker 1: but what exactly is that. Well, a pivot in Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley speak is when you realize you've done messed up
Speaker 1: and you need to try something else. So if you
Speaker 1: ever hear about a company pivoting, what that's really saying
Speaker 1: is that the people in charge realized that what they
Speaker 1: had been doing is just not working and they'd better
Speaker 1: do something else or they're going to face ugly consequences.
Speaker 1: For Kreeger and Systrom, that meant taking a look at
Speaker 1: their app and then trying to figure out what they
Speaker 1: might be able to salvage from it. And while the
Speaker 1: check in services were sewn up, one thing that stood
Speaker 1: out was the idea of a photo sharing app. Their
Speaker 1: first attempt at building a solo photo sharing app was
Speaker 1: a failure. It didn't even get a new name, and
Speaker 1: this was before they had entirely abandoned the hope for
Speaker 1: a full featured bourbon app. But they got back to
Speaker 1: it and they began to refine their approach, and one
Speaker 1: thing that really helped them out was the inclusion of
Speaker 1: a popular feature in Instagram, the photo filter. Systram tells
Speaker 1: a story about being on vacation with his then girlfriend
Speaker 1: now his wife, Nicole. Nicole was another Stanford graduate, and
Speaker 1: she explained to Systrom that she never really liked sharing
Speaker 1: the photos she was taking with her iPhone four because
Speaker 1: she felt they never looked as good as she wanted
Speaker 1: them to. And that inspired System to develop a filter
Speaker 1: for photos taken by the iPhone four camera, and one
Speaker 1: that would automatically adjust settings in a post processing approach,
Speaker 1: so you didn't have to do all that messing around
Speaker 1: with settings yourself. It would just automatically apply them and
Speaker 1: make the image better. So it would change the color balance,
Speaker 1: it would change the contrast, it would soften the edges,
Speaker 1: adding a little bit of golden light to sweeten the image.
Speaker 1: And he taught himself how to create the tools and
Speaker 1: then developed his first filter, the x pro to filter,
Speaker 1: And according to both System and Krieger, they would use
Speaker 1: Photoshop to actually create the effects they wanted to create
Speaker 1: within Photoshop, and then reverse engineer how to do that
Speaker 1: within the app how to create those same effects uh
Speaker 1: as an as a post processing trick with images taken
Speaker 1: from a iPhone camera. Ultimately, Krieger and System decided that
Speaker 1: their new app would allow users to share photos, to
Speaker 1: leave comments, and to like images, as in you could
Speaker 1: hit the little like button or the little heart button
Speaker 1: and say, hey, that was a pretty cool picture. I
Speaker 1: really enjoy it, and also to use filters. They needed
Speaker 1: a new name, and they chose Instagram, which is a
Speaker 1: portmanteau of instant and Telegram and also kind of hearkens
Speaker 1: back to the instant cameras that Sistram had played with
Speaker 1: when he was younger, like a classic Polaroid camera. It
Speaker 1: took the two about eight weeks to go from the
Speaker 1: idea to a full fledged app, and before they submitted
Speaker 1: the app to the Apple App Store, they tested it
Speaker 1: with their friends. And these were influential friends. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just buddies who were in the neighborhood. These are people
Speaker 1: like Jack Dorsey, who was the founder of Twitter. Not
Speaker 1: bad idea. If you want to get some evangelists for
Speaker 1: your product, you go after people who already have a
Speaker 1: wide following. And a little after midnight on October six,
Speaker 1: the Instagram app launched in the App Store. When it debuted,
Speaker 1: it was an iPhone exclusive, and it would remain so
Speaker 1: for more than a year and a half. The app
Speaker 1: wouldn't be available on other platforms for a while, so
Speaker 1: on the first day of it being available, about twenty
Speaker 1: thousand people downloaded the app. They began taking photos, they
Speaker 1: began sharing them and breaking the system. The system load
Speaker 1: was too much for Instagram's initial servers to handle, and
Speaker 1: it sent Systram and Krieger onto a little bit of
Speaker 1: a panic. They tried to figure out who they could
Speaker 1: contact to get some advice, and they settled on Adam D'Angelo,
Speaker 1: whom System had met at a Sigma New party at
Speaker 1: Stanford years earlier, D'Angelo had served as Facebook's chief technology
Speaker 1: officer and was a pretty knowledgeable guy. D'Angelo helped out
Speaker 1: his buddy and talked him through the process of moving
Speaker 1: the load over to Amazon's hosting services, where Instagram could
Speaker 1: rent server capacity while building out its own systems. According
Speaker 1: to Systrom, the conversation took about half an hour and
Speaker 1: then things were back up and running. Now, at this point,
Speaker 1: it was still a two man show, and both Systrom
Speaker 1: and Krieger made it a habit to always have a
Speaker 1: computer with WiFi capability handy in case there was a
Speaker 1: need to jump into the app and patch it so
Speaker 1: that you could smooth out a bug or fix other problems,
Speaker 1: which was happening on a fairly regular basis due to
Speaker 1: the enormous popularity of the app, because within just three
Speaker 1: weeks that thousand user base had grown to three hundred thousand,
Speaker 1: and this was just the start of a wild ride.
Speaker 1: I have more to say about Instagram, but before I
Speaker 1: jump into the next section, let's take another quick break
Speaker 1: and thank our sponsor. The same month that Instagram launched,
Speaker 1: Systrom and Krieger hired their first coworker, Josh Redal. He
Speaker 1: would become the community manager and led efforts to form
Speaker 1: partnerships at Instagram. He had previously worked at next Stop,
Speaker 1: the same company that Systram had worked for earlier in
Speaker 1: a month later in November, Shane Sweeney joined as a
Speaker 1: mobile engineer. Sweeney had become interested in program main through
Speaker 1: computer games It's sound familiar, and then later through social platforms.
Speaker 1: He had started working in web development while still in
Speaker 1: high school. He had moved on to doing work with
Speaker 1: a company that was called Digital Path that was making
Speaker 1: wireless mesh networks. It's a pretty cool technology. I'll have
Speaker 1: to do a full episode on that at some point.
Speaker 1: But three months into his stint of working for the company,
Speaker 1: the funding fell out and one hundred people were laid off,
Speaker 1: including Sweeney. He would go on to work on personal
Speaker 1: projects at dog Patch Labs, using that as a workspace,
Speaker 1: and there he met Sistrom and Sistrom invited him to
Speaker 1: work on Bourbon earlier in but Sweeney actually said no
Speaker 1: when he was invited to work on Bourbon. It was
Speaker 1: only after Instagram launched that Sweeney reconsidered and joined the team.
Speaker 1: And in fact I saw an interview with Sweeney where
Speaker 1: he said there's an ongoing joke at Instagram that everyone
Speaker 1: says no to Systrom. Initially he asks them to join
Speaker 1: his project, and they'll say no, and then later on
Speaker 1: they'll change their minds and say yes, and that this
Speaker 1: is just a thematic thing that goes on at Instagram. Well,
Speaker 1: there wouldn't be another higher until two thousand eleven, so
Speaker 1: in those initial weeks, Instagram was a four person operation. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the app continued to get thousands of downloads and user
Speaker 1: activity was increasing on a daily basis. In fact, by December,
Speaker 1: Instagram had one million registered users. And remember this was
Speaker 1: before there was any support for platforms like Android or
Speaker 1: Windows Mobile. This was purely on iOS. The flagship phone
Speaker 1: for Instagram was the iPhone four, which had launched in
Speaker 1: June two thousand ten. The iPhone four had two cameras.
Speaker 1: The back facing one was a five megapixel camera and
Speaker 1: the front facing camera was just point three megapixels. And
Speaker 1: a quick explanation for folks who have heard the term
Speaker 1: megapixels but they don't really have a grasp on what
Speaker 1: that's all about. Megapixels are a way to measure image resolution.
Speaker 1: A pixel is a point of light within a digital
Speaker 1: image or a screen. So if you are looking at
Speaker 1: a television screen, every single little bit of that television
Speaker 1: screen is made up of tiny little points of light
Speaker 1: called pixels. So every photo is a collection of pixels.
Speaker 1: If you only have a small number of pixels, your
Speaker 1: image is going to be blocky and ill defined. I've
Speaker 1: used this example before, but imagine that you've got a
Speaker 1: bunch of blocks of different colors, and the blocks measure
Speaker 1: maybe two inches per side, and you're told to make
Speaker 1: the image of a flower, and you're given fifty blocks
Speaker 1: to do it. That flower is going to be a
Speaker 1: little blocking. But let's say you're given two hundred blocks
Speaker 1: and they're each a half inch per side. Well, that
Speaker 1: flower is going to be less blocky. It's gonna look
Speaker 1: more like a flower. The smaller the blocks are, and
Speaker 1: the more blocks you have, the more refined the image
Speaker 1: you can create, So you increase the resolution of your image. Uh, However,
Speaker 1: that's only part of the quality of a photo. It
Speaker 1: is true that more pixels generally means higher resolution image,
Speaker 1: and a megapixel is technically one million, forty eight thousand,
Speaker 1: five D seventy six pixels that we usually just round
Speaker 1: down and say it's a million pixels, But megapixels don't
Speaker 1: always mean better photos. Like if you have a ten
Speaker 1: megapixel camera and your friend has a fifteen megapixel camera,
Speaker 1: it does not necessarily mean the fifteen megapixel images are
Speaker 1: going to be better than yours. Uh, I mean it
Speaker 1: matters a lot of other things matter too. System's then girlfriend,
Speaker 1: Nicole now wife. That's what she was complaining about the
Speaker 1: iPhone four camera. Wasn't that the megapixels were bad. It's
Speaker 1: just that there were other elements that would factor into
Speaker 1: the quality of an image, like color representation, or contrast
Speaker 1: and other factors. And that's partly why photo filters became
Speaker 1: so popular. The filters could compensate for shortcomings in the
Speaker 1: digital camera sensors that were found in smartphones at the time.
Speaker 1: Instagram was not the only out to do this, or
Speaker 1: even the first app to do this. The app hip
Speaker 1: Stomatic had already made a name for itself at this time,
Speaker 1: turning smartphone photos into these little, squared off images that
Speaker 1: look like vintage photographs, and it had several filters that
Speaker 1: would automatically apply to each image to give it sort
Speaker 1: of that vintage feel. But Instagram gave users an easier
Speaker 1: way to archive photos and keep a record of those images.
Speaker 1: And unlike hip Stomatic, which cost a dollar ninety nine
Speaker 1: to purchase, Instagram was free. What's more, Systrom had said
Speaker 1: it would always be free and that monetization strategies would
Speaker 1: not involve users coughing up money to pay for the service.
Speaker 1: I have to do a full episode and hip Stomatic
Speaker 1: at some point, because that's another fascinating story of a
Speaker 1: company that made a huge impact when it launched, only
Speaker 1: to find itself in troubled waters. A couple of years later,
Speaker 1: in January twoleven, Instagram rolled out support for one of
Speaker 1: its enduring features, hashtags. The hashtag the pounds symbol had
Speaker 1: already gained popularity over at Twitter, where users had sort
Speaker 1: of invented and adopted the practice in an effort to
Speaker 1: make it easier to follow tweets about specific subjects. You
Speaker 1: would use Twitter Search and you would search hashtag the term,
Speaker 1: and that way you would just get the tweets that
Speaker 1: were specifically including that hashtag, because otherwise, if you just
Speaker 1: search for a regular word, you get a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of tweets that were not relevant to whatever it was
Speaker 1: you were looking for. So it was a way to
Speaker 1: narrow things down. Um, So that was how it worked
Speaker 1: on Twitter, but in Instagram it would do something similar,
Speaker 1: but this time you allow for another possible application, a
Speaker 1: group photo album. The way it works on Instagram is
Speaker 1: that you would caption the photo and you would include
Speaker 1: one or more hashtags to help describe the photos context,
Speaker 1: what the photo is about, what's going on in the photo,
Speaker 1: something that's more specific than just hashtag photo. Perhaps you
Speaker 1: attended an event and you wanted your image included with
Speaker 1: others from that same event, So you might do something
Speaker 1: like hashtag Jonathan's birthday party, and then other people are
Speaker 1: using that same hashtag, and it becomes easy to see
Speaker 1: all the photos taken by all the people at that
Speaker 1: event by doing a search on hashtag Jonathan's birthday party.
Speaker 1: You just use that hashtag and boom, your image is
Speaker 1: going to join all the others tagged with that same label. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: the more general the label, the more likely your image
Speaker 1: is going to be grouped with a bunch of ones
Speaker 1: that don't really have the same, uh, same perspective, or
Speaker 1: the same relevance as yours. So you want to get
Speaker 1: as specific as you can without getting ridiculously long hashtags.
Speaker 1: It's a bit of a balancing act to do this.
Speaker 1: You have to make sure you're using those right hashtags.
Speaker 1: So if you use one variation and everyone else uses
Speaker 1: a different one, you're the one who's left out. So
Speaker 1: let's say again, you said hashtag Jonathan's birthday and everyone
Speaker 1: else is doing hashtag John Strickland's birthday, then yours is
Speaker 1: not going to show up with everybody else's. And Instagram
Speaker 1: elites will tell you that including lots of hashtags to
Speaker 1: cover several different contexts is key to discover ability. I've
Speaker 1: seen guides about best uses, best practices on on Instagram
Speaker 1: suggesting that you should use no fewer than a dozen
Speaker 1: hashtags when you're capturing your photos if you want people
Speaker 1: to see them. I questioned that because I think after
Speaker 1: a while, if you see that many hashtags, you start
Speaker 1: to roll your eyes. But then again, I don't have
Speaker 1: that many followers on Instagram, so who am I to
Speaker 1: say whatever? Like I, I can't give strategic advice. But
Speaker 1: it has led to abuse of the system as people
Speaker 1: began to use hashtags that were completely unrelated to the
Speaker 1: photos that they were posting, just in an effort to
Speaker 1: get those photos seen. It would be disingenuous for me
Speaker 1: to take a photo of, say the building I work
Speaker 1: in and tag it with hashtag Beyonce just to see
Speaker 1: if I could get more impressions with my image. And
Speaker 1: as Instagram has grown in popularity, having a lot of
Speaker 1: followers and engagement in the app has become much more important.
Speaker 1: It can be a way to get hired as a
Speaker 1: social manager, for example. So as a result, Instagram has
Speaker 1: occasionally instituted new policies to help cut down on hashtag abuse,
Speaker 1: including implementing a policy called shadow banning, which really only
Speaker 1: became known years later. And a shadow ban still allows
Speaker 1: you to post to Instagram. You can still contribute, but
Speaker 1: it will not share your images with the Instagram community
Speaker 1: through those hashtags. So let's say that I have been
Speaker 1: abusing hashtags on Instagram for a while. The algorithms have said,
Speaker 1: this guy is just using random hashtags that have nothing
Speaker 1: to do with his photos. We're gonna shadow ban him.
Speaker 1: And then I go to see a big event. Let's
Speaker 1: say I go to, uh, the next Star Wars premiere,
Speaker 1: and I'm taking a lot of photos from the red carpet,
Speaker 1: and I want to have Star Wars Premiere hashtag on
Speaker 1: my Instagram photos so they could be added with everyone else's.
Speaker 1: I could still post all those photos to Instagram, and
Speaker 1: if you went to my account, you would actually see
Speaker 1: those photos, but they would not be shared with all
Speaker 1: the other Star Wars premiere photos because the shadow band
Speaker 1: would keep my hashtag from working. And it was all
Speaker 1: meant to negate this tendency for people to use hashtags
Speaker 1: that had nothing to do with the images they were posting,
Speaker 1: just in an effort to boost the number of views
Speaker 1: they were getting. In early two thousand eleven, Instagram held
Speaker 1: another round of investment funding. The apps popularity was skyrocketing,
Speaker 1: with more than a million and a half users in
Speaker 1: February and more than two fifty thousand photos shared each day,
Speaker 1: and investors flocked to the new company. Adam to Angelo
Speaker 1: was one of those investors, as was Jack Dorsey. Chris Soaka,
Speaker 1: who was an early employee over at Google, also invested
Speaker 1: in the company, and in all, angel investors poured seven
Speaker 1: million dollars into Instagram, which still had fewer than five
Speaker 1: people working there, so more than a million dollars per employee,
Speaker 1: which is pretty darn good. In two thousand eleven, Instagram
Speaker 1: would continue on its trajectory of growth. The company would
Speaker 1: hire three more new employees. Jessica Zolman joined in August
Speaker 1: eleven as a community evangelist. She acted as part customer
Speaker 1: service representative and part communicator from the company to the
Speaker 1: users to explain new features and changes to the app.
Speaker 1: In October two thousand eleven, Amy Cole joined Instagram to
Speaker 1: handle business operations. Cole had previously worked for Sephora in
Speaker 1: business development, and in December two thousand eleven, Gregor Hachmouth
Speaker 1: and I'm sure I'm mispronouncing his name joined the company
Speaker 1: as an engineer. And he had previously co founded a
Speaker 1: company called Mody, which presented users with slide shows of art, products, typography,
Speaker 1: and more, and you would rate the images with various
Speaker 1: finger swipe gestures. By the end of two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: Instagram boasted ten million active monthly users. Version two point
Speaker 1: oh of the app had gone live on iOS and
Speaker 1: incorporated new features, including new filters, some new post processings
Speaker 1: like borders and tilt control, and more. But the real
Speaker 1: crazy stuff would happen the following year. In two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: Instagram would grow again and it would hold another round
Speaker 1: of funding. System would talk about how he had no
Speaker 1: intention to sell the company and then he sold the
Speaker 1: company to Facebook just days later. But I'll cover that
Speaker 1: in our next episode. For now, we're gonna wrap up.
Speaker 1: Thank you Nellie for the request, and I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed this first episode about the earliest days at Instagram,
Speaker 1: how it was born out of a totally different app.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because when we cover in the second part,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about how Instagram's more recent trajectory has sort
Speaker 1: of put it back in line with what Bourbon was
Speaker 1: doing earlier in some ways, not exactly the same way,
Speaker 1: but in ways that make me a little worried is
Speaker 1: probably the wrong word, but concerned. Let's say, if you
Speaker 1: guys have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, hit
Speaker 1: me up since me and email. The address for the
Speaker 1: show is tech Stuff at how stuff Works dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can draw me a line on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle there is tech stuff hs W and hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, we have an Instagram account. You should
Speaker 1: follow that and I'll talk to you again really soon
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
Speaker 1: it how stuff Works dot Com