48 Fun Facts About Instagram

Which star's record for the most-liked Instagram post fell in January 2019 to a stock photo of an egg?

Kylie Jenner's photo announcing baby Stormi had topped 18 million likes; weeks later the egg's creator, a London ad creative, used it in a Hulu mental-health ad.

When Instagram launched in October 2010, which phone could run it?

iPhone: the founders built Instagram around photos taken on the iPhone 4, which had come out only months before the launch.

Kevin Systrom co-founded Instagram with which Brazilian software engineer?

Mike Krieger later teamed up with Systrom again on Artifact, an AI news app that Yahoo bought, and in 2024 became Anthropic's chief product officer.

What was the name of the mobile check-in app that became Instagram?

Burbn let people check in, make plans and post photos, but it had too many features, so its founders cut everything except photos, comments and likes.

Instagram's founders dropped their check-in app partly because it was too similar to which rival?

Foursquare's venue database still powered Instagram's location tags for years, until Instagram began testing a replacement in 2014.

'Instagram' is a portmanteau of 'instant camera' and which word?

Telegram: Kevin Systrom said the name captured what users were doing, sending 'an instant telegram of sorts', and that it also sounded 'camera-y'.

What reason did Kevin Systrom's girlfriend give for not wanting to share photos on his early app?

They didn't look good, she said, so Systrom decided the app needed filters, and he spent that afternoon building one, X-Pro II.

Which company bought Instagram in April 2012?

Facebook promised to keep Instagram running independently rather than fold it into its own app, and Systrom stayed on to run it.

Roughly how much did Instagram sell for in 2012?

$1bn was the headline price, but most of it was paid in the buyer's shares, and after their price dropped the deal was worth about $736.5m.

For nearly five years, Instagram made every photo fit which shape?

A square: in Florence, a professor had given Systrom a plastic Holga camera that took square photos, and every Instagram post had to be one until August 2015.

An Instagram Story stays visible to others for how many hours?

24 hours: Systrom said Stories let people share a stream of everyday moments without flooding their profile or their followers' feeds.

In 2019, what did Instagram start doing when someone typed a comment that resembled bullying?

Asked if they were sure: people could still post, but Instagram said early tests showed some chose to undo the comment and share something less hurtful.

Which US agency's antitrust case argued that Meta should never have been allowed to buy Instagram?

The FTC lost in November 2025, when Judge James Boasberg ruled it had not shown that Meta still held monopoly power.

What do users call it when Instagram quietly hides someone's posts from others without telling them?

Instagram was shadowbanning by 2017, hiding posts with spammy hashtags from search results as it fought bots and paid-for likes.

Which religious leader joined Instagram in March 2016, weeks after meeting its co-founder Kevin Systrom?

Pope Francis doesn't take or upload the photos himself: members of the Vatican's staff run the account for him.

Which co-founder of Twitter invested in Instagram's $7 million Series A in 2011?

Jack Dorsey was an early fan: Systrom, who had sat beside him as an intern at Odeo, showed him Instagram before it launched.

Who became head of Instagram in October 2018 after the founders stepped down?

Adam Mosseri told a Senate hearing in December 2021 that Instagram would bring back a chronological feed option.

Instagram's test hiding public like counts began in May 2019 in which country?

Canada: Instagram said it wanted people to worry less about how many likes they got, and that July the test spread to six more countries.

Which Instagram video app, launched in 2018 for long vertical videos, was shut down in March 2022?

IGTV was pitched as Instagram's answer to YouTube, but Instagram scrapped the separate app to keep all video, including Reels, inside the main app.

Which Meta app, launched in July 2023 and requiring an Instagram account, was built to rival Twitter?

Threads reused the name of a 2019 Instagram messaging app that fewer than 0.1% of users tried, yet tens of millions joined the new one within days.

Reels, introduced in August 2020, was built to compete with which app?

TikTok's formula of short clips set to existing sounds was the model, and by November 2020 Reels had its own tab on Instagram's home screen.

Which Instagram tab, dropped in 2019, showed what your friends were liking and commenting on?

Following went because, Instagram's head of product said, many people didn't realise their likes and comments were showing up there.

Which singer's 2012 video for 'Anything Could Happen' was built from fans' Instagram photos?

Ellie Goulding asked fans to photograph single words from the song, and about 1,200 of their Instagram photos made it into the clip.

The 2018 scandal over which political data firm led Instagram to slash outside apps' access to its data?

Cambridge Analytica's scandal made Instagram switch off parts of its old developer API at once, instead of on the date it had planned, July 31, 2018.

The October 2021 outage that took down Instagram also knocked out which messaging app owned by the same company?

WhatsApp went dark for hours too, and some of the company's own staff reportedly couldn't get into buildings because their security badges stopped working.

Ireland's data regulator fined Instagram in 2022 over how it handled the data of which users?

Teenagers who switched to business accounts had their email addresses and phone numbers shown publicly, and the fine came to $402 million.

What did Instagram add in 2017 so people could hide posts instead of deleting ones that drew too few likes?

Archive also helped Instagram itself: posts deleted for getting too few likes took content off the platform, while hidden ones stayed.

What did millions of Instagram users post on June 2, 2020, to protest against racism and police brutality?

A black square: many were tagged #BlackLivesMatter, burying activists' updates under rows of identical black images.

Which country blocked Instagram in August 2024 amid a row over deleted condolence posts?

Turkey's internet regulator gave no reason, but a top official had accused Instagram of blocking posts mourning Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

Which Apple device finally got its own Instagram app in September 2025, about 15 years after launch?

iPad users waited so long that outside developers built their own apps for browsing Instagram on the tablet.

Instagram's June 2012 update merged its Popular page with search into which new tab?

Explore later became personal: from 2016 it offered channels such as 'Videos You Might Like', which gathered videos from across Instagram's community.

Which artist's 'New Portraits' turned other people's Instagram posts into canvases reportedly selling for $90,000?

Richard Prince was then undercut by one of the accounts he had copied, which began selling prints of the same pictures for $90 each.

Instagram's 2013 launch of 15-second video was seen as a response to which app?

Vine's clips ran just six seconds, and as rivals like Instagram offered short video too, Twitter announced in 2016 that it would shut Vine down.

What did Instagram do after the viral July 2022 post 'Make Instagram Instagram again' criticised its redesign?

Partly rolled back its changes: it paused a full-screen feed test, though its boss said failing now and then showed Instagram was thinking big enough.

After a December 2012 terms change sparked a revolt, Instagram promised it had no intention of doing what?

Selling users' photos was how many read the new ad clause, and Kevin Systrom called the confusing wording 'our mistake' a day later.

Stories, launched in August 2016, was widely noted as resembling which rival app?

Snapchat's version was even called Stories, and Kevin Systrom openly credited Snapchat with developing the format.

Which poet's 2015 photo showing menstrual blood was deleted twice by Instagram before she protested?

Rupi Kaur's protest post went viral, and Instagram apologised and brought the photos back, calling the removal a mistake.

In 2023, Meta began letting Instagram users get a verified badge by doing what?

Paying a monthly fee: subscribers were promised direct customer support, but during 2025's mass account bans many said that help was useless.

Which fashion brand ran the first ad in US Instagram feeds on November 1, 2013?

Michael Kors's watch photo followed a week in which Instagram showed users a sample sponsored post to get them used to ads.

Which Instagram stand-alone app turns photos into one-second looping videos?

Boomerang got an app of its own because Instagram didn't want to bloat its main app with extra features.

Since August 2020, what does Instagram show once you've caught up on accounts you follow?

Suggested posts from accounts you don't follow appear right after the 'caught up' marker, so the feed no longer comes to an end.

When Instagram announced its algorithmic feed in 2016, what did many accounts beg followers to turn on?

Post notifications sent fans an alert for each new post, which stars and brands hoped would stop them missing updates once the feed left time order.

What unpopular change did a December 2018 update briefly impose on the feed?

Horizontal swiping made the feed tap through like Stories, and Instagram called it both a bug and a test released too widely by mistake.

In November 2020, the activity-feed tab was replaced by which new tab?

Shop took the activity heart's place in the tab bar, and Instagram pitched it as a better way to discover products from brands and creators.

Which newspaper published leaked internal research in 2021 finding Instagram worsened body image for many teen girls?

The Wall Street Journal's reports drew pushback from the company, which said they focused on a limited set of findings.

Which planned app did Instagram 'pause' in September 2021?

Instagram Kids was meant for 10- to 12-year-olds, and Instagram said pausing it would let it address concerns from parents, experts and regulators.

The Edits video app was announced in 2025 as a response to US action against which rival editor?

CapCut is made by ByteDance, and Edits copied features such as green screen and cutouts, which Instagram's head openly acknowledged.

What did hackers sell for $10 a search after exploiting a 2017 Instagram bug?

Contact details: Instagram first said high-profile verified accounts were targeted, then admitted non-verified users were affected too.