As of October 2015, over 40 billion photos had been uploaded.

In April 2012, Facebook acquired the service for approximately US$1 billion in cash and stock. As of January 2019, the Stories feature is used by 500 million users daily.After its launch in 2010, Instagram rapidly gained popularity, with one million registered users in two months, 10 million in a year, and 1 billion as of May 2019. The service also added messaging features, the ability to include multiple images or videos in a single post, and a Stories feature-similar to its main opposition Snapchat-which allows users to post photos and videos to a sequential feed, with each post accessible by others for 24 hours each.

In 2015, these restrictions were eased with an increase to 1080 pixels. Instagram was originally distinguished by only allowing content to be framed in a square (1:1) aspect ratio with 640 pixels to match the display width of the iPhone at the time. Users can like photos and follow other users to add their content to a feed. Users can browse other users' content by tags and locations and view trending content. Posts can be shared publicly or with pre-approved followers. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. The Android version was released in April 2012, followed by a feature-limited desktop interface in November 2012, a Fire OS app in June 2014, and an app for Windows 10 in October 2016. Instagram (commonly abbreviated to IG or Insta) is an American photo and video sharing social networking service owned by Facebook, created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger and originally launched on iOS in October 2010.

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