She said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in September 2013 that the company should be ready to begin selling advertising by September 2014 as a way to generate business from a popular entity that had not yet created profit for its parent company. Instagram verifies accounts based on its own discretion, and not all accounts meeting the criteria may be verified. This marked a significant shift from the previous system where verification was typically initiated by Instagram itself for accounts it deemed to be of public interest or high-profile. Instagram introduced a verification feature, known as the blue verified badge, in December 2014. In September 2025, Instagram began testing a Reels-first user interface in India and South Korea.
YouTube’s $3M fund for creative professionals in L.A.
In July, Instagram started allowing users to respond to Stories content by sending photos and videos, complete with Instagram effects such as filters, stickers, and hashtags. It also added messaging features, the ability to include multiple images or videos in a single post, and a Stories feature—similar to its main competitor, Snapchat, which allowed users to post their content to a sequential feed, with each post accessible to others for 24 hours. The changes included a feed more focused on Instagram’s content algorithms, full-screen photo and video posts, and changing the https://www.cuscocasinoonline.nl/ format of all of its videos to Reels. In July 2016, it announced that users would be able to turn off comments for their posts, as well as control the language used in comments by inputting words they consider offensive, which will ban applicable comments from showing up. In August 2016, Instagram launched Instagram Stories, a feature that allows users to take photos, add effects and layers, and add them to their Instagram story.
Reviews with images
Users will only be able to view these Highlights after they have gone through all current Stories in their tray, meaning that those who follow many accounts may find it challenging to see these updates. They appear as circles below the profile picture and biography and are accessible from the desktop website as well. In August 2023, Instagram introduced new adjustments to protect user privacy and prevent harassment and spam. After the update (which is rolled out to a segment of the user base) the Instagram Direct icon transforms into Facebook Messenger icon. Meta issued a public apology, stating that a technical error led to the unintended recommendation of such content.
While Instagram has a neutral gender-bias format, 68% of Instagram users are female and 32% are male. As of 2014update, Instagram’s users are divided equally, with 50% iPhone owners and 50% Android owners. 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 October 2016, Instagram Stories reached 100 million active users, two months after launch.
- It was integrated with Instagram’s “Close friends” feature, so that users could send images, photos, and texts privately to others, and also had Instagram’s photo editing system embedded into the app.
- In June 2014, Instagram announced the rollout of ads in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, with ads starting to roll out that autumn.
- In June 2020, because of the Black Lives Matter movement, Instagram became more widely used as a social justice platform.
- Users will only be able to view these Highlights after they have gone through all current Stories in their tray, meaning that those who follow many accounts may find it challenging to see these updates.
- The Cuban government blocked access to several social media platforms, including Instagram, to curb the spread of information during the 2021 Cuban protests.
- The feature was updated in April 2017 to let users organize saved posts into named collections.
- Users can browse other users’ content by tags and locations, view trending content, like photos, and follow other users to add their content to a personal feed.
On August 2, 2024, Turkey blocked Instagram after the platform deleted posts from users offering condolences for the death of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. In February 2023, Instagram introduced a new feature allowing users to browse and post GIFs in their comments. Similar to Snapchat, the app allowed users to communicate through messaging and video chats.
- This renaming gave an even bigger response, it rapidly gained popularity, reaching 1 million registered users in two months, 10 million in a year, and 1 billion in June 2018.
- The Android version of Instagram was released in April 2012, followed by a feature-limited desktop interface in November 2012, a Fire OS app in June 2014, an app for Windows 10 in October 2016, and an app for iPadOS in September 2025.
- Get the official YouTube app on iPhones and iPads.
- In September 2025, Instagram began testing a Reels-first user interface in India and South Korea.
- Similar to Snapchat, the app allowed users to communicate through messaging and video chats.
2014: Additional platforms and acquisition by Facebook
Users can upload photographs and short videos, follow other users’ feeds, and geotag images with the name of a location. This feature allows users to share updates as short text posts of up to 60 characters with certain people, who can then reply to them using messaging on Instagram. During Facebook F8, it was announced that Instagram would, beginning in Canada, pilot the removal of publicly displayed “like” counts for content posted by other users. Realizing that it was too similar to Foursquare, they refocused their app on photo-sharing, which had become a popular feature among its users.
2019: IGTV, removal of the like counter, management changes
Digital rights groups such as 7amleh and Access Now argue that the removal of Palestinian content reflects broader issues of digital discrimination and have called for greater transparency from social media platforms. Instagram denied intentional censorship and attributed the deletion of Palestinian posts to glitches. On January 2020, after the Assassination of Qasem Soleimani by the United States, Instagram removed posts expressing support for General Soleimani.
In December 2017, Instagram began to allow users to follow hashtags, which display relevant highlights of the topic in their feeds. On March 1, 2021, Instagram launched a new feature named Instagram Live Rooms, which lets four people go live together. In November, Instagram began to support Alt text to add descriptions of photos for the visually impaired. In September 2011, a new version of the app included new and live filters, instant tilt–shift, high-resolution photographs, optional borders, one-click rotation, and an updated icon.
In April 2012, Facebook acquired the service for approximately US$1 billion in cash and stock. The app received around 25,000 registrations that day, though it remained a public beta. The Burbn Beta app was made available for iOS on October 6, 2010, by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger — still as a prototype, but for the first time available as a real app on the App Store rather than a web-based prototype.
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A comparison of users with non-users showed boys with an account differ from boys without in terms of over-evaluation of their shape and weight, skipping meals, and levels of reported disordered eating cognitions. A 2021 study by Büttner & Rudertb showed that not being tagged in an Instagram photo triggers the feeling of social exclusion and ostracism, especially for those with higher needs to belong. Mackson et al. 2019 found users were less lonely than non-users and Instagram membership predicts lower self-reported loneliness.
To comply with the GDPR regulations regarding data portability, Instagram introduced the ability for users to download an archive of their user data in April 2018. However, unlike post likes, the user who posted a comment does not receive notifications about comment likes in their notification inbox. On May 11, 2016, Instagram revamped its design, adding a black-and-white flat design theme for the app’s user interface, and a less skeuomorphistic, more abstract, “modern” and colorful icon.
