9781422270431
9781422270431
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THE STORY BEHIND THE APP Instagram
JACKSON PETERS
MASON CREST MIAMI
Mason Crest PO Box 221876, Hollywood, FL 33022 (866) MCP-BOOK (toll-free) • www.masoncrest.com
Copyright © 2024 by Mason Crest, an imprint of National Highlights, Inc. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher. First printing 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN (hardback) 978-1-4222-4778-5 ISBN (series) 978-1-4222-4773-0 ISBN (ebook) 978-1-4222-7043-1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Peters, Jackson, author. Title: Instagram: the story behind the app / Jackson Peters. Description: Hollywood, FL: Mason Crest, [2024] | Series: Tech titans | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023014414 | ISBN 9781422247785 (hardback) | ISBN 9781422270431 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Systrom, Kevin, 1983---Juvenile literature. | Krieger, Mike, 1986---Juvenile literature. | Instagram (Firm)--Biography--Juvenile literature. | Image files--Juvenile literature. | Computer file sharing--Juvenile literature. | Software engineering--Biography--Juvenile literature. Classification: LCC TR267.5.I57 P48 2024 | DDC 005.74/6--dc23/eng/20230327
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CONTENTS
Chapter 1: Story of a Startup . ......................................... 7 Chapter 2: Rise to the Top . ..................................... 21 Chapter 3: Market Domination . ................................. 33 Chapter 4: Beyond the Boardroom . ........................... 47 Chapter 5: On the Horizon ............................................. 61 Series Glossary of Key Terms . ....................................... 74 Further Reading . ................................................ 76 Internet Resources ......................................................... 77 Index . ............................................................................... 78 Author’s Biography & Credits ................................................. 80 KEY ICONS TO LOOK FOR:
Words to Understand: These words with their easy-to-understand definitions will increase the reader’s understanding of the text while building vocabulary skills. Sidebars: This boxed material within the main text allows readers to build knowledge, gain insights, explore possibilities, and broaden their perspectives by weaving together additional information to provide realistic and holistic perspectives. Educational Videos: Readers can view videos by scanning our QR codes, providing them with additional educational content to supplement the text. Examples include news coverage, moments in history, speeches, iconic sports moments, and much more! Text-Dependent Questions: These questions send the reader back to the text for more careful attention to the evidence presented there. Research Projects: Readers are pointed toward areas of further inquiry connected to each chapter. Suggestions are provided for projects that encourage deeper research and analysis. Series Glossary of Key Terms: This back-of-the-book glossary contains terminology used throughout this series. Words found here increase the reader’s ability to read and comprehend higher-level books and articles in this field.
WORDS TO UNDERSTAND
colleagues: the people you work with entrepreneurs: people who start their own businesses, often taking financial risks to do so internships: starting jobs to help young people gain experience programming language: a type of computer code designed to be easily understood by humans
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chapter 1
STORY OF A STARTUP
Today, the launch of a new app is precisely marketed and timed to the second. At the dawn of the tech boom, however, entrepreneurs entered the burgeoning digital frontier haphazardly and often with no schedule. Thus, it was shortly after midnight on a Wednesday in early October 2010 when Instagram went live, forever altering the social media landscape. This was the moment Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger had worked so hard to reach but could not possibly have realized would evolve into one of the most wildly successful ventures of the 21st century. Exhausted but happy, they headed for bed. “We figured we’d have at least six hours before anyone discovered the app so we could grab some shut-eye,” Systrom wrote on the company’s blog. They, of course, were wrong. Within minutes, downloads were happening in all corners of the globe. Systrom and Krieger were amazed—and overjoyed. After only a few hours, they had 10,000 users—and that number hasn’t stopped growing. Now, more than 100 million photos and videos are shared on Instagram every day, making it one of the most used and beloved apps in the world.
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CREATIVE CHILDREN Kevin Systrom began his life in Holliston, Massachusetts, on December 30, 1983. As a child, he often received high scores in school and was known as a bright kid. His love for programming and computer languages began when he first had access to a computer in the home at the age of 12. He loved video games, and Doom II interested him so much that he tried his hand at editing the different levels found in the game. The first computer programming language he learned was QBasic, but he eventually moved on to more complex languages as his expertise grew. One program he wrote using Visual Basic allowed him to boot his friends offline when they were using American Online (AOL), a popular Internet browsing and social networking tool at the time. His online antics actually caused his family’s AOL account to be banned! The Internet was his playground, and the expansion of the Internet only made him even more enthusiastic about the future. Systrom attended high school at Middlesex School, a boarding school located in Concord, Massachusetts, for students in grades nine through twelve. His mother, Diane, worked as a marketing executive, and his father, Douglas, was a president in a human resources position. They knew that students who graduated from Middlesex School were well prepared for college life. The unique setup of the school allowed Systrom to replace a class he wasn’t interested in—biology—with a different subject that grabbed his attention: computer science. By the time he graduated, he was more than ready for the next step of his education. He had no
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The video game Doom II was what first got Systrom interested in programming.
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Story of a Startup
Middlesex School gave Systrom a great educational foundation.
difficulty being accepted into Stanford University, which is one of the most challenging colleges in the country to gain entry, as it typically rejects 95 percent of applicants each year. Meanwhile, Krieger had grown up in a very different area of the world. He was born on March 4, 1986, in São Paulo, Brazil. His birth name is Michel, but his friends and colleagues in the United
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A LOVE OF PHOTOGRAPHY During Systrom’s junior year of college, he traveled to Italy to study photography. He brought a very powerful SLR camera with him, but his teacher immediately swapped it with a less powerful one. Systrom says this experience taught him “the beauty of vintage photography and also the beauty of imperfection.”
Stanford University’s location in California’s Silicon Valley makes it an ideal place to connect with the tech industry.
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Story of a Startup
States refer to him as Mike. He moved to the United States in 2004 to continue his education as a student at Stanford University. And that’s where he and Systrom met. THE STRENGTH OF STANFORD Stanford University has attracted so many young entrepreneurs because of its convenient location near Palo Alto, California, part of a larger area known as Silicon Valley, where many technological startups begin. Some of the brightest minds have studied and graduated from this well-known university, including Brian Acton, co-creator of WhatsApp, which he sold to Facebook to become a billionaire; Joseph Hardin Coulombe, founder of the grocery store chain Trader Joe’s; Doris Fisher, co-founder of the popular clothing chain store The Gap; and Reed Hastings, co-founder and CEO of Netflix; among others. Systrom’s management classes got him interested in starting his own company, and he gained valuable experience while at Stanford. He was selected to be a part of the Mayfield Fellows, a very selective program for students looking to get involved in growing technology companies. Only about a dozen students are accepted into the program, which helps those students find internships and future jobs in both small and large companies. One of the first companies Systrom interned at was Odeo, which eventually reformed after he left as a new company that went on to develop the massive messaging app Twitter. Working at Odeo gave Systrom the opportunity to meet Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who offered him a job
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HOME OF HEAVYWEIGHTS
Silicon Valley is the nickname given to the region of Northern California, where many of the world’s largest and most prominent global technology companies, and some emerging startups, have their headquarters. Those that reside here include Apple, Facebook, and Google, among others. The nickname started in the 1970s because of the many manufacturers of silicon chips (used in computers and other electronic devices) located there.
Odeo would later play a large role in creating Twitter, one of the most successful social media companies in the world. Working at the company was an excellent experience for Systrom.
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Story of a Startup
HOBBIES Krieger worked very hard, but he also found time to pursue some hobbies outside of school and work. He worked at an Internet radio station while attending Stanford University and even performed as a DJ in his spare time.
there in 2006. Systrom turned down the offer so he would have time to finish his degree at Stanford. Instead of working for one successful social networking website, Systrom ended up creating his own years later. During his years at Stanford, Systrom also started a few personal projects. One of his first startups was a website specifically targeted to people attending Stanford University. Students could use the website to buy and trade items. This Craigslist competitor eventually gained more than 8,000 members, which wasn’t bad for a service built by someone who didn’t even have a computer science degree. Meanwhile, Krieger was working on his own area of expertise. His major was symbolic systems, with a specific focus on human computer interaction. He was most interested in how humans used computers both in the present time and how they might use them in the future, and that interest has never gone away. Krieger interned at a few well-known companies, including Microsoft and Foxmarks, where his skills as a software developer went to great use.
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One of Systrom’s early projects was similar to Craigslist, a website where people can post items they want to buy or sell from other users.
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Story of a Startup
Systrom and Krieger talk about their roles in starting Instagram, working together, and more in this 2014 interview.
BEGINNING OF BURBN Systrom began thinking about a startup project soon after exiting Stanford. His first job was at Google, where he stayed for a couple of years as the Associate Product Marketing Manager. Then, he jumped to Nextstop, a small travel tip site. With dreams of creating his own startup simmering, he gave up that job, raised $500,000 from investors, recruited Krieger, and started Burbn (the name came from his interest in fine bourbon). Systrom kept running into Krieger at coffeehouses in the San Francisco area, so they had maintained a casual relationship after their days at Stanford. When Systrom floated the idea of working together, Krieger embraced the opportunity, and soon, the pair would flourish together in the tech
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