Photo and video sharing app launched in 2010 by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger and bought by Facebook, now Meta, in 2012 for about $1 billion. It reported 3 billion monthly active users in September 2025.
Industry: Social media | Location: Menlo Park, United States | Founded: 2010
About Instagram
Instagram is a photo and video sharing app owned by Meta Platforms. Users post and edit images and videos, follow other accounts and exchange direct messages, and the service also carries short-form Reels and ephemeral Stories. It is based in Menlo Park, California, and in September 2025 Meta said it had reached 3 billion monthly active users.
Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger started the project in San Francisco as Burbn, a check-in app, before turning it into a photo-sharing service that launched on Apple's iOS on 6 October 2010. It passed 1 million registered users within two months. Both founders left in 2018, and on 1 October 2018 Facebook named Adam Mosseri, a Facebook employee since 2008 who had worked on the News Feed and was Instagram's vice president of product, as head of Instagram.
The app added Stories in August 2016, the long-form video service IGTV in June 2018, which closed in 2022, and Reels in August 2020. Instagram passed 1 billion users in 2018. In July 2023 Meta launched Threads, a text-based social network linked to Instagram accounts.
Facebook announced on 9 April 2012 that it would buy Instagram for about $1 billion in cash and shares, and said it would keep building the app independently, including features such as posting to other networks. The deal closed in September 2012.
In September 2025 Mosseri said most of the app's recent growth had come from direct messages, Reels and recommendations, and Instagram said it would test letting users adjust the topics that drive their Reels recommendations.
In May 2026 TechScoop, citing a report by The Information, said Meta was building an AI shopping agent into Instagram to help users complete purchases, with deployment targeted before the fourth quarter of 2026. It followed a test, described at the Shoptalk conference in March 2026, that showed AI-generated review summaries and more product details when users clicked through from ads.
Leadership
- Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram
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