Instagram

Instagram

Original author(s)	Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger (Burbn, Inc.)
Developer(s)	Facebook
Initial release	October 6, 2010; 7 years ago
Stable release(s) [±]
Android 36.0.0.13.91 / March 9, 2018; 21 days ago iOS 35.0 / March 5, 2018; 25 days ago Windows 10 10.915.27847.0 / September 14, 2017; 6 months ago Windows 10 Mobile 10.1096.22713.0 / September 14, 2017; 6 months ago
Preview release(s) [±]
Android 40.0.0.0.9 / March 28, 2018; 2 days ago
Development status	Active
Operating system	iOS, Android, Windows 10 Mobile, Windows 10
Size	139.4 MB (iOS), 32.34 MB (Android)
Available in	36 languages
Type	Photo
License	Proprietary Freeware
Alexa rank	17 (Global, January 2018)

Instagram is a mobile, desktop, and Internet-based photo-sharing application and service that allows users to share pictures and videos either publicly, or privately to pre-approved followers. It was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, and launched in October 2010. It was acquired by Facebook in 2012.

Instagram lets registered users upload photos or videos to the service. Users can apply various digital filters to their images, and add locations through geotags. They can add hashtags to their posts, linking the photos up to other content on Instagram featuring the same subject or overall topic. Users can connect their Instagram account to other social media profiles, enabling them to share photos to those profiles as well. Originally, a distinctive feature of Instagram was its confining of photos to a square; this was changed in August 2015, when an update started allowing users to upload media at full size. In June 2012, an "Explore" tab was introduced, showing users a variety of media, including popular photos and photos taken at nearby locations, trending tags and places, channels for recommended videos, and curated content. Support for videos was originally launched in June 2013, and had a 15-second maximum duration and limited quality, with Instagram later adding support for widescreen and longer videos. Private messaging, called Instagram Direct, was launched with basic photo-sharing functionality in December 2013, and has gradually received major updates incorporating more features, most notably text support and "disappearing" photos. In August 2016, Instagram introduced a "Stories" feature, letting users add photos to a 24-hour temporary story, with subsequent updates adding virtual stickers and augmented reality objects.

After its launch in 2010, Instagram rapidly gained popularity, with one million registered users in two months, 10 million in a year, and ultimately 800 million as of September 2017. Its users had uploaded over 40 billion photos to the service as of October 2015. As of April 2017, Instagram Direct has 375 million active users, while, as of June 2017, the Instagram Stories functionality has over 250 million active users. The popularity of Instagram has resulted in widespread community engagement, including dedicated "trends", in which users post specific types of photos on specific days of the week with a hashtag representing a common theme. Instagram has received positive reviews for its iOS app, and it has been named "one of the most influential social networks in the world". However, the company has been the subject of criticism, most notably for policy and interface changes, allegations of censorship, and illegal or improper content uploaded by users.

Instagram was acquired by Facebook in April 2012 for approximately US$1 billion in cash and stock.

Instagram was initially a free mobile app exclusively for the iOS operating system. A version for Android devices was released two years later, in April 2012, followed by a feature-limited website interface in November 2012, and apps for Windows 10 Mobile and Windows 10 in April 2016 and October 2016 respectively.

History

The login and sign-up screen for the Instagram app on the iPhone as of April 2016

Instagram began development in San Francisco, when Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger chose to focus their multi-featured HTML5 check-in project, Burbn, on mobile photography. As Krieger reasoned, Burbn became too similar to Foursquare, and both realized that it had gone too far. Burbn was then pivoted to become more focused on photo-sharing. The word Instagram is a portmanteau of instant camera and telegram.

Explore

In June 2012, Instagram introduced "Explore", a tab inside the app that displays popular photos, photos taken at nearby locations, and search. The tab was updated in June 2015 to feature trending tags and places, curated content, and the ability to search for locations. In April 2016, Instagram added a "Videos You Might Like" channel to the tab, followed by an "Events" channel in August, featuring videos from concerts, sports games, and other live events, followed by the addition of Instagram Stories in October.The tab was later expanded again in November 2016 after Instagram Live launched to display an algorithmically-curated page of the "best" Instagram Live videos currently airing. In May 2017, Instagram once again updated the Explore tab to promote public Stories content from nearby places.

Users

See also: List of most followed users on Instagram

Following the release in October, Instagram had one million registered users in December 2010.^[ In June 2011, it announced that it had 5 million users, which increased to 10 million in September. This growth continued to 30 million users in April 2012 80 million in July 2012,100 million in February 2013, 130 million in June 2013, 150 million in September 2013,300 million in December 2014, 400 million in September 2015, 500 million in June 2016, 600 million in December 2016, 700 million in April 2017, and 800 million in September 2017.

In October 2016, Instagram Stories reached 100 million active users, two months after launch. This increased to 150 million in January 2017, 200 million in April, surpassing Snapchat's user growth, and 250 million active users in June 2017.

In April 2017, Instagram Direct had 375 million monthly users.

In June 2011, Instagram passed 100 million photos uploaded to the service. This grew to 150 million in August 2011, and by June 2013, there were over 16 billion photos on the service. In October 2015, there existed over 40 billion photos.

On August 9, 2012, English musician Ellie Goulding released a new music video for her song "Anything Could Happen." The video only contained fan-submitted Instagram photographs that used various filters to represent words or lyrics from the song, and over 1,200 different photographs were submitted.

Instagram was listed among Time's "50 Best Android Applications for 2013" list.

Instagram has 20 million users in Iran.

Facebook

Facebook, Inc.

[show] Screenshot
Type of business	Public
Type of site	Social networking service
Available in	Multilingual (140)
Traded as	NASDAQ: FB (Class A) NASDAQ-100 Component S&P 100 Component S&P 500 Component
Founded	February 4, 2004; 14 years ago
Headquarters	Menlo Park, California, United States of America
Coordinates	37.4848°N 122.1484°W
Area served	United States (2004–2005) Worldwide, except blocking countries (2005–present)
Founder(s)	Mark Zuckerberg Eduardo Saverin Andrew McCollum Dustin Moskovitz Chris Hughes
Key people	Mark Zuckerberg (Chairman and CEO) Sheryl Sandberg (COO)
Industry	Internet
Revenue	US$40.653 billion (2017)[1]
Operating income	US$20.203 billion (2017)[1]
Net income	US$15.934 billion (2017)[1]
Total assets	US$84.524 billion (2017)[1]
Total equity	US$74.347 billion (2017)[1]
Employees	25,105 (December 31, 2017) [2]
Alexa rank	3 (January 2018)[3]
Registration	Required
Users	2.2 billion monthly active users (January 2018)
Written in	C++, PHP (as HHVM)[4] and D language[5]

Facebook is an American online social media and social networking service company based in Menlo Park, California. Its website was launched on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg, along with fellow Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes.

The founders initially limited the website's membership to Harvard students. Later they expanded it to higher education institutions in the Boston area, the Ivy League schools, and Stanford University. Facebook gradually added support for students at various other universities, and eventually to high school students. Since 2006, anyone who claims to be at least 13 years old has been allowed to become a registered user of Facebook, though variations exist in this requirement, depending on local laws. The name comes from the face book directories often given to United States university students. Facebook held its initial public offering (IPO) in February 2012, and began selling stock to the public three months later, reaching an original peak market capitalization of $104 billion, a new record. Facebook makes most of its revenue from advertisements which appear onscreen.

Facebook may be accessed by a large range of devices with Internet connectivity, such as desktops, laptops and tablet computers, and smartphones. After registering, users can create a customized profile indicating their name, occupation, schools attended and so on. Users can add other users as "friends", exchange messages, post status updates, share photos, videos and links, use various software applications ("apps"), and receive notifications of other users' activity. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups organized by workplace, school, hobbies or other topics, and categorize their friends into lists such as "People From Work" or "Close Friends". Additionally, users can report or block unpleasant people.

Facebook has more than 2 billion monthly active users as of June 2017. Its popularity has led to prominent media coverage for the company, including significant scrutiny over privacy and the psychological effects it has on users. In recent years, the company has faced intense pressure over the amount of fake news, hate speech and depictions of violence prevalent on its services, all of which it is attempting to counteract.

Number of advertisers

In February 2015, Facebook announced that it had reached two million active advertisers with most of the gain coming from small businesses. An active advertiser is an advertiser that has advertised on the Facebook platform in the last 28 days. In March 2016, Facebook announced that it reached three million active advertisers with more than 70% from outside the US.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WiDIhIkPoM

Offices

In early 2011, Facebook announced plans to move to its new headquarters, the former Sun Microsystems campus in Menlo Park. All users outside of the US and Canada have a contract with Facebook's Irish subsidiary "Facebook Ireland Limited". This allows Facebook to avoid US taxes for all users in Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa and South America. Facebook is making use of the Double Irish arrangement which allows it to pay just about 2–3% corporation tax on all international revenue. In 2010, Facebook opened its fourth office, in Hyderabad and the first in Asia.

Facebook, which in 2010 had more than 750 million active users globally including over 23 million in India, announced that its Hyderabad center would house online advertising and developer support teams and provide round-the-clock, multilingual support to the social networking site's users and advertisers globally. With this, Facebook joins other giants like Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Dell, IBM and Computer Associates that have already set up shop. In Hyderabad, it is registered as 'Facebook India Online Services Pvt Ltd'.

Though Facebook did not specify its India investment or hiring figures, it said recruitment had already begun for a director of operations and other key positions at Hyderabad, which would supplement its operations in California, Dublin in Ireland as well as at Austin, Texas. A custom-built data center with substantially reduced ("38% less") power consumption compared to existing Facebook data centers opened in April 2011 in Prineville, Oregon.^[173] In April 2012, Facebook opened a second data center in Forest City, North Carolina, US. In June 2013, Facebook opened a third data center in Luleå, Sweden. In November 2014, Facebook opened a fourth data center in Altoona, Iowa, US. In September 2016, Facebook announced a coming datacenter in Los Lunas, New Mexico in 2018 powered by renewable energy.

On October 1, 2012, CEO Zuckerberg visited Moscow to stimulate social media innovation in Russia and to boost Facebook's position in the Russian market. Russia's communications minister tweeted that Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev urged the social media giant's founder to abandon plans to lure away Russian programmers and instead consider opening a research center in Moscow. Facebook has roughly 9 million users in Russia, while domestic analogue VK has around 34 million.

The establishment of a woodworking facility on the Menlo Park campus was announced at the end of August 2013. The facility, opened in June 2013, provides equipment, safety courses and a woodworking learning course. Employees are required to purchase materials at the in-house store. A Facebook spokesperson explained that the intention of setting up the facility is to encourage employees to think in an innovative manner because of the different environment; it also serves as an attractive perk for prospective employees. On November 21, 2016 Facebook announced that it will open its new London headquarters next year and create another 500 jobs in the UK. New headquarters will be in Fitzrovia in central London at a site that is currently undergoing redevelopment. Facebook's London-based executive, Nicola Mendelsohn said "The UK remains one of the best places to be a tech company," In August 2017, Facebook announced the opening of a new office in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2018. Facebook will occupy the top three floors of 100 Binney St in Kendall Square and share the building with the pharmaceutical employees from Bristol-Myers Squibb. The offices will be home to Facebook's “Connectivity Lab”, a group focused on bringing Internet access and technology to 4 billion people who do not have access to the Internet.

Information

Facebook is the largest social networking site in the world, with 750+ million active users as of July 2011. Marketers are increasingly paying attention to Facebook since the audience is so large and engaged.

Social media

A Facebook page on a mobile phone

Social media are computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks. The variety of stand-alone and built-in social media services currently available introduces challenges of definition; however, there are some common features:

1. Social media are interactive Web 2.0 Internet-based applications.
2. User-generated content, such as text posts or comments, digital photos or videos, and data generated through all online interactions, is the lifeblood of social media.
3. Users create service-specific profiles for the website or app that are designed and maintained by the social media organization.
4. Social media facilitate the development of online social networks by connecting a user's profile with those of other individuals or groups.

Users typically access social media services via web-based technologies on desktop, computers, and laptops, or download services that offer social media functionality to their mobile devices (e.g., smartphones and tablet computers). When engaging with these services, users can create highly interactive platforms through which individuals, communities, and organizations can share, co-create, discuss, and modify user-generated content or pre-made content posted online. They introduce substantial and pervasive changes to communication between businesses, organizations, communities, and individuals. Social media changes the way individuals and large organizations communicate. These changes are the focus of the emerging fields of technoself studies. Social media differ from paper-based media (e.g., magazines and newspapers) or traditional electronic media such as TV broadcasting in many ways, including quality, reach, frequency, interactivity, usability, immediacy, and permanence. Social media outlets operate in a dialogic transmission system (many sources to many receivers). This is in contrast to traditional media which operates under a monologic transmission model (one source to many receivers), such as a paper newspaper which is delivered to many subscribers, or a radio station which broadcasts the same programs to an entire city. Some of the most popular social media websites are Baidu Tieba, Facebook (and its associated Facebook Messenger), Gab, Google+, Myspace, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter, Viber, VK, WeChat, Weibo, WhatsApp, Wikia, Snapchat, These social media websites have more than 100,000,000 registered users.

Most popular services

1. Facebook: 2,047,000,000 users
2. YouTube: 1,500,000,000 users
3. WhatsApp: 1,200,000,000 users
4. Facebook Messenger: 1,200,000,000 users
5. WeChat: 938,000,000 users
6. QQ: 861,000,000 users
7. Instagram: 700,000,000 users
8. QZone: 638,000,000 users
9. Tumblr: 357,000,000 users
10. Twitter: 328,000,000 users
11. Sina Weibo: 313,000,000 users
12. Baidu Tieba: 300,000,000 users
13. Skype: 300,000,000 users
14. Viber: 260,000,000 users
15. Snapchat: 255,000,000 users
16. Reddit: 250,000,000 users
17. Line: 214,000,000 users
18. Pinterest 175,000,000 users

19. 

    •••

    BY MATTHEW HUDSON
    Social media is a series of websites and applications designed to allow people to share content quickly, efficiently and in real-time. Most people today define social media as apps on their smartphone or tablet, but the truth is, this communication tool started with computers. This misconception stems from the fact that most social media users access their tools via apps. In fact, 50% of online users never engage social media.

Social media is a phrase that we throw around a lot these days, often to describe what we post on sites and apps like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and others.