When Kevin and Mike started Instagram, they were trying to solve 3 problems [1]: 1. Mobile photos don't look great 2. Uploads on mobile are slow 3. Sharing to

When Kevin and Mike started Instagram, they were trying to solve 3 problems [1]: 1. Mobile photos don't look great 2. Uploads on mobile are slow 3. Sharing to multiple services without having to think about which app in advance Using their app was the way to solve these problems. So now those problems are solved, and they’ve moved into related spaces. Layout, for example, came about because every other photo collage app either: (1) had a terrible user experience or (2) was plastered with ads (or both). And remember that before Instagram, they built Burbn, where they learned how confusing feature overload was to consumers. > While in San Francisco, Systrom and Mike Krieger built Burbn, a HTML 5 check-in service, into a product that allowed users to do many things: check in to locations, make plans (future check-ins), earn points for hanging out with friends, post pictures, and much more. However, recalling their studies in Mayfield Fellows Program, Krieger and Systrom identified that Burbn contained too many features and the users did not want a complicated product. [2] More than anything else, I think this drove them to focus on simple but great UX and the app; and that's why they don't ship new experimental features as much as, say Snapchat. The Instagram web app is decent today, but this has changed radically in the past year. > “While Instagram.com is designed to be complementary to the mobile apps, it’s important to the global conversations that happen on Instagram,” an Instagram spokesperson said. [3] In the time they idled on the desktop side, some good third party Instagram web viewers were created: Iconosquare, Websta (Webstagram), and INK361 to name a few. Their API access to Instagram was ad free. But this all changed last week when Instagram announced killing off third party viewers, by stealthily burying the lede in the context of one app that was scraping passwords. [4][5] (They already have OAuth after all.) So why all this backstory? Because now they have 300M users they need to monetize. They’re not killing off “malicious apps”; they’re reducing their competition to have more control over the user experience so they can recapture advertising money. Now the problems they’re solving are for businesses to deliver relevant advertising to their user base [6]. When you’re in the app, they control this whole experience (and the analytics around it). Less so on the wild wild web in the land of ad and tracking blockers. That said, with third-party web apps dying off, I think we’ll see the desktop web app continue to grow and be invested in, though with ads. P.S. I am a heavy Instagram user (https://www.instagram.com/kicksopenminds/ https://www.instagram.com/kicksopenminds/). 1: http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2735 http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2735 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Systrom#Burbn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Systrom#Burbn 3: http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/20/instagram-brings-search-to-the-web/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/20/instagram-brings-search-to-... 4: http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/17/9751574/instagram-app-developers-api-restrictions-security-privacy http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/17/9751574/instagram-app-dev... 5: http://www.macrumors.com/2015/11/17/instagram-new-api-changes/ http://www.macrumors.com/2015/11/17/instagram-new-api-change... 6: http://www.forbes.com/sites/thesba/2015/06/19/the-monetization-of-instagram/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/thesba/2015/06/19/the-monetizati...