Jeff Chiu/AP
- $4 launched as an iOS app in 2010, and became available for Android users in 2012.
- Instagram of 10 years ago looked different from the app we use today, and was missing many features that now seem vital.
- The original app didn't have messages or stories, and photos had to be cropped to square images.
- $4.
When Instagram launched in 2010, using it was a much different experience than the Instagram of today.
Instagram started as a photo-sharing app, but it didn't have the additional features it boasts today, including Instagram live, stories, messaging, and more. The company has made other changes in the past decade, like $4 the determines what photos you see rather than showing them in chronological order.
This year, Instagram has experimented with removing some early features. It nixed the $4 in October, which had existed as far back as 2011 as a tool for keeping an eye on what posts your friends interact with. Even more drastically, Instagram is now testing out $4 worldwide, an experiment that started out this summer in several countries, including Canada and Australia, and spread to the US a few weeks ago.
But 2010 was a simpler time - it was two years before $4 for $1 billion. In other words, Instagram was just getting started. Here's how it looked a decade ago compared to today.