GIGAMΞSH on Warpcast

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GIGAMΞSH pfp

Does anyone have a theory on what enabled Instagram to get to 27m users with only 13 employees in 2012, and why that still seems very difficult today despite all the SASS products helping startups? Some game companies also used to release a new game monthly in the 90s, without code completion, Copilot, Git, Github!

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GIGAMΞSH pfp

A lot of answers are about product & market conditions. I’m more fascinated by how such a small eng team could manage that scale 12 years ago.

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Ironically it was simplicity. The app may be a bloated "everything app" now but back then it was just photos, no comments. It was like a great mobile Flickr with filters. They then added just the right features. Once Facebook bought them, it was hard for anyone to ever do that again. Snap tried. TikTok went more...

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Alex Loukissas 🍉 pfp

Alex Loukissas 🍉

From a technical POV, takeaways: 1. KISS 2. Use proven, boring technologies 3. Don't reinvent the wheel https://read.engineerscodex.com/p/how-instagram-scaled-to-14-million

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ted (not lasso)

yes, i’ve studied this maniacally. but i’m sure @dwr.eth has too :) don’t have time to share thoughts now but will later!

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Antonio García Martínez pfp

Antonio García Martínez

IIRC improved iPhone camera launched right there. I suspect it was a good measure of luck. There were lots and lots of filter photo apps at the time. There were also lots of taxi/ride-sharing apps when Uber launched. The retconning usually features the app as providential in its success. :)

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My 2 gwei: It was a completely different time than today (far less competition for our attention) and they revolutionized the way people kept up to date with their friends - they simplified facebook and hyper focused it on images.

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Nico.cast🐱 pfp

Same with WeChat and Minecraft (sold for 2B? With 3 people) On the technical side good engineering and infra

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Nick T pfp

Timing - limited competition in the app store + first iPhone with decent camera. Value prop: upload bad photos and make them look vintage and edgy. Adopted by rising hipster movement that started peaking just as they launched. Default auto-upload to FB bolstered growth.

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@gabrielayuso.eth

The problem is not the stack but the distribution and capturing people's attention. They piggybacked on Facebook and Twitter social graphs. They made it easy to share Instagram photos on many social platforms and blogs. They had a distinct look and feel. They made shitty phone photos look good.

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tyloomis.eth pfp

Easy sign up. Upload contacts. Easy to follow all friends. Easy inviting. Simple and clean product design. What else am I missing? 🤔 💭

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Juli 🎩↑ pfp

Thanks for the great question. Checking answers & background story now. 1000 $degen

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kareem pfp

I have a feeling their explore page was what worked in the early days that drove the most vitality. At the time One Direction was massive and the explore page was mostly just that lol

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Rugtoshi Nakamoto

First mover advantage is everything ( most of the time)

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iky pfp

Watch Kevin Systroms interview with Lex. He talks at length about this. Tl,dr they managed to upload pics in the backgroud while people played with filters, drastically improving upload time> Engagement > Users

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GoodCancerGuy 🎩 pfp

GoodCancerGuy 🎩

BEING EARLY! Being 1st in many cases. Long very sad story in 1997 I was getting 10,000+ people a day to my website for free by just posting on usenet newsgroups & "SEO". I got my first .com in 1994 when they were FREE. Don't like to think about it, but I think I was sub 10k .com name worldwide.

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LoadingALIAS pfp

Something is happening to development. The whole C suite stack; the messy interlopers asking for shit that doesn’t fit. The $300k checks and societal attitude of “do less” is why, IMO.

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Things were not so noisy. Simpler days. IG was the first easy way to share the hundreds of photos we all had on our new shiny camera phones. Now every new App or service is "X for this, and X for that". There was no X for sharing photos from your mobile elegantly, easily, and publicly back then.

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I think it was market positioning, Facebook had a terrible mobile experience at the time There was only 2 apps that were focused on photo sharing and they missed the mark. Ie; It took too long to post a pic and share it. Instagram focused on one thing the photo sharing aspect.

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