“I think that communicating via images is one of these mediums that you’re going to see take off over the next few years because of a fundamental shift in the enabling technology.”

Kevin Systrom on the launch of Instagram back in October of 2010.

I think it's safe to say that he was spot on.

After pivoting from failed location-based app Burbn, the team doubled down on what was working. Photos.

It took roughly 2 months for Instagram to reach 1,000,000 users. Quite the feat for an app that would only be available on iPhone (not even the web) until 2012.

Instagram would continue taking the world by storm.

Everyone was now a semi-professional photographer. People realllllly loved those filters.

In April of 2012 Facebook announced that it was buying Insta for the eye-popping amount of $1,000,000,000. Billion with a B.

In hindsight, this would go down as arguably the most lopsided acquisition in tech history as many now believe Instagram is worth more than $100 billion on its own right now.

Zuck can't keep getting away with this…