It’s not every day that a mobile app is acquired by a social media giant for a cool one billion dollars- which explains why Instagram’s acquisition by Facebook was one of the hottest topics a few weeks ago. Infographic Labs, which previously created an infographic on the Rise of Instagram, tracks Instagram’s journey to $1 billion with this infographic design:
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In March 2010 Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger raised $500,000 for a company called burbn, a platform that would later be renamed Instagram and which would eventually fall under the ownership of Facebook after being purchased for $1 billion. From zero to 30 million users in just 17 months Instagram is a cultural and business success.

In celebration of Instagram’s sale to Facebook the team at Visual.ly has put together an infographic that showcases the apps rise to meteoric success. There are very few apps that can release on Google Android to 1 million app downloads in 24 hours and 5 million downloads in just 6 days but Instagram is that app.

Jon Stewart recently quipped:

“A billion dollars of…money?  For a thing that kind of ruins your photos?”

While Jon may have been talking about Instagram in jest the company has done no wrong since launching, from securing $500,000 then $7 million and $50 million in separate funding rounds the company acquired the right talent, managed its community with ease and ultimately created a fun product that takes social photo sharing to a whole new level that other photo platforms have not yet been able to compete with.

Here’s the Instagram rise to fame infographic: read more

Instagram this week was purchased by Facebook for an astounding $1 billion and following the announcement of the buyout the Instagram App has become the number one downloaded mobile application inside the iOS App Store, marking the first time that that 30 million strong platform has risen to the top of Apple’s free-app catalog.

Instagram announced the milestone in a tweet. The downloads are well deserved as the program currently has a solid five-star rating that has been achieved with the help of 74,833 individual reviews which makes the program one of the most liked among users.

When the acquisition of Instagram was announced on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerbergs personal Facebook page there was skepticism from many people who thought Facebook who destroy the platform, yet the social networks reach to nearly 1 billion users seems to have had the opposite effect as millions of more people flock to the photo sharing service.

In response to the download new users appear to love Instagram, tweeting “too good” and “I use it every day!” read more

Instagram has become a behemoth of a photo-sharing site and based off its more than 30 million users and the release of its Google Android based app version last week the company is believed to be close to a new round of massive funding.

According to AllThingsD  the San Francisco-based startup plans to grab $50 million in Series B funding which would be led by venture capital firm Sequoia Capital and which would valuate the company at $500 million.

You may recall that back in February 2011 Instagram raised $7 million from Benchmark Capital and a group of big name tech guru’s including Square and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey.

During initial funding Instagram had just 1.75 million registered users.  read more

While many of us purchase Valentine’s day cards for our significant others and perhaps a nice bouquet of flowers Kaitlyn Trigger decided to give her boyfriend a much bigger and involved present, a brand new photo sharing platform.

Kaitlyn’s Lovestagram program is so thoughtful because her boyfriend is Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger and it’s his platform she chose to use when creating Lovestagram.

The program is essentially an interactive Valentine’s card maker that implements the Instagram API to create Valentine’s Day cards.

The program works by creating a slideshow of all Instagram photos you share with your special someone by using mutual username tags, photos you took in the same location within one hour of each other and photos where comments have been exchanged.  read more

InstaBG is a simple to use program that allows users to pull in various Instagram photos to create awesome Twitter backgrounds for their personal accounts. By simply giving the program access to your Twitter profile you can not only create a nice background but have it auto-updated with fresh picture content each day.

I personally find that InstaBG is great for photographers who want to showcase their most recent digitally stored photographs with very little effort.

To get started you’ll first visit InstaBG.com where you will be greeted with the following display: read more

Twitter on Friday received a long awaited brand endorsement when athletic apparel and equipment maker Nike finally joined the social network with the account @Nike.

At the time of this post Nike has managed to amass 19,395 followers during the accounts first day in existence.

Almost immediately following the Twitter accounts release major athletes began following the brand including Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong and Steve Nash among others.

The move to Twitter shows Nike’s dominance over the market after the company managed to rack up more followers than Adidas in less than a 24 hour period. read more

Instagram has become a photo sharing sensation, allowing users to organize their photos and share them across a vast mobile network, now thanks to the website InstaBG.com users can share their own photos and the photos of other publicly available albums with a simple and sleek interface that auto updates daily and offers plenty of customization.

The program couldn’t possibly be any easier to use, once a user clicks on “Sign in with Twitter Account” they are asked to verify their Twitter credentials and approve the application for use.

Next a screen displays that shows users a list of options they can choose from: read more

Since it’s launch the popular photo sharing service Instagram has only been available for Apple iOS based devices and now the company has announced plans to launch a Google Android version of the program, a smart decision given Google’s nearly 50% smartphone market share.

With the launch of the new application Instagram believes they can double their current user database which includes more than 50 million active users.

Speaking at LeWeb in Paris Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom revealed:

“We have two people working on Android now,” and “I’m excited to be able to see our numbers today nearly double.”

At this time there is no timeline for the launch of the new Android app and Systrom wasn’t exactly forthcoming with details for the new program.  read more

In case you missed them we have five stories from 9/5/11 through 9/9/11 that you should be sure to check out. Whether you’re a Facebook user with multiple admin pages, a Foursquare users trying to figure out why your friends haven’t adapted the technology or an Instagram fan we have something this week that you’ll find engaging. Also be sure to check out our post about the Google acquisition of Zagat and Google’s big plans for the Google +1 button.

Facebook Security Flaw Let’s Users Hijack Pages From Original Owners 

Facebook pages are meant to provide users with a forum to share a specific interest or set of interests, this week it was discovered that page creators could be booted from their own pages by administrators who they assigned to help moderate their public forums. Facebook FAQ say that type of activity isn’t allowed but it was discovered to be a possibility.

Smartphone Users Less Likely To Checkin Than Perform Other Tasks [Study]

Smartphone users love to play Angry Birds, even check their email, text message and make phone calls, what they don’t care much for is the ability to “check-in” at locations using location based services such as Foursquare and Gowalla. This article examines numbers provided by a recent Pew Research Survey and shows that less than 15% of users have taken to location based services and even fewer of those users are checkin-in each day.

Here Comes Instagram: Infographic

Instagram is quickly becoming a juggernaut in the social sharing photo platform world. While Flickr took 2 years to reach 100 million photos, Instagram reached that same level in just 8 months while attracting 7 million users in just nine months. This infographic shows the incredible speed at which Infogram has become a big player in the photo sharing world. read more