Photo sharing service Instagram: 150 million users in 3 years

Instagram founder Kevin Systrom may be the luckiest man in the tech world. We're not saying he doesn't work hard, but we're saying the photo-sharing app he founded three years ago has been going too smoothly.

Sitting comfortably on a sofa in the London office of the Observer, the Boston-born software engineer exudes a calm and composed demeanor. Indeed, for a man who sold his company to Facebook for $1 billion at the age of 28, he should be fully prepared for everything that might happen in the future, especially about Instagram's future profit strategy.

Filter puzzle

"Currently, Instagram users upload 55 million photos every day, so photo browsing and discovery has always been a strong point for us. If you see something interesting happening in Syria or Egypt, we want to be able to convey your voice to the world. And it's also very interesting to find the balance between human editors and machine algorithms, because no one can predict someone's perspective on a certain event," said Systrom.

Now, most of the content on Instagram is some heavily saturated, nostalgic photos with a lot of filters. The specific content of the pictures is also stereotyped, mostly sunsets, latte art or cute children. Systrom admits that Instagram users have shown some symptoms of "filter fatigue", but he still believes that the existence of filters can help users easily edit their own lives.

"I think of filters as a way to record a different tone of a moment in life, so we allow users to edit their own feelings and perceptions," said Systrom.

He then used the movie Traffic as an example to further explain. Traffic uses different techniques to tell the audience three different stories. Systrom said: "We allow users to use similar methods to deal with their own lives. Moreover, more and more filters we launch will only make slight changes to the image effect. Because if the user's modification of the photo content is too obvious, you obviously won't continue to look at these photos in 20 years. We hope that the content posted by users on the Instagram platform can maintain its value and still reflect its value in 5-10 years, rather than just becoming flashy pictures."

It is worth noting that Instagram's speed of popularity in recent years is particularly noteworthy because the app has found a way to make its services reach a large number of mainstream users who are not concerned about the false prosperity of Silicon Valley. In addition, the app's very simple photo sharing method has also helped it accumulate 150 million users in a short period of time.

Mobile Strategy

To be sure, Instagram's "mobile first" strategy has always been the key to the company's success, which is precisely one of the reasons why Facebook finally decided to acquire Instagram. Therefore, Facebook also needs to prove to users that it is ready to transform its business to mobile.

"We had no choice. If we asked users to register for the service on the web and then helped them upload pictures of events that happened five hours ago, Instagram would not achieve the desired results. What is special about Instagram is that the pictures you see are uploaded in real time by the user's friends," said Systrom.

In addition, Systrom also talked about the limited screen size of mobile devices. At present, many advertisers think that the limited screen size of mobile devices is a problem, but Systrom believes that such limitations also bring creative advantages on the other hand.

“The limitations of a mobile device screen have their own beauty, while unlimited space can feel overwhelming. So we give users a limited space and tell them to focus on just one small area of ​​the photo. This message feels intimate and is one of the things people love about Instagram.”

In fact, even in Mark Zuckerberg's engineering-centric world, there is no computer algorithm that can decide which photo is the most beautiful based on the golden ratio theorem. It is reported that Instagram currently has only six community editors who are responsible for processing photos uploaded by 150 million users. The types of pictures they usually recommend include those related to China's Qingming Festival.

Business Model

Instagram first launched its short video service in June 2013, but the service failed to beat Twitter's short video service Vine. At the same time, Systrom also declined to provide data on the popularity of Instagram's video service among users because he did not want to arouse excessive expectations for the service. Most advertisers still trust traditional TV platforms, but the 15-second short video services provided by Instagram and Vine seem to be designed for them (Instagram's first advertising product will not be officially launched until later this year).

"The advertising market has huge potential, but we will not launch new products just for advertising," said Systrom. "Instagram's existing photo stream + user comment format has been accepted by many other mobile apps. Therefore, this has become a very compact way to deliver information, and developers can build a better business around this model."

At the end of the interview, Systrom also talked about Google Glass. Google Glass integrates augmented reality technology and has a built-in camera that can take photos and videos. For Instagram, Google Glass, a device that can record life at any time, is simply a perfect match for any photo sharing service. Systrom said that he would never miss this opportunity.

"We will become ubiquitous. Instagram will be available on all platforms, phones, tablets, and wearable computing devices, and will become the core channel for people to share information. In five years, I hope to see not only the content shared by my friends on Instagram, but also the morning news from different channels. In other words, I hope Instagram can become a window for users to understand the world."