Instagram was the first app of its kind to make phone cameras social.
At the time, about the only thing you could do with pictures you took with your phone was sync.
Instagram was released at a critical moment in history when phone cameras were starting to get good and cellular Internet was starting to get fast enough to reliably upload them.
You can't look at the landscape today and ask "Why is instagram popular?". You have to look at it in its historical context.
Facebook had image uploading via mobile at the same time instagram was purchased. So it isn't just that.
Instagram smartest thing they did was leverage the Facebook social graph (something much harder to do now) to integrate instagram photos as posts in the feed, so that when a user clicked on them, you ended up at instagram rather than staying inside Facebook.
Instagram was a camera + profile app. Snapchat was a camera+message.
Facebook took a long time to get mobile right. Instagrams simplicity, and Facebooks lack of response was what allowed Instagram to grow. And dont forget Instagram was originally more a photo hosting adoon for twitter, similar to imgur to reddit.
As an aside, our most successful projects were similar to this. Right place, right time, and people on HN would probably assume the MVP could be built in a week, which was true at least in our cases.
Yup. They were first and they iterated & made it great. Didn't even have to write an Android version for a while.
When you compare the amount of work required to get a startup off the ground then to what is required now. (dual mobile platforms & web & social) And the total number of apps & services. It's a deluge of information.
Then is there much change to start a service or company these days & see success? Maybe I'm getting too old, but normally I'd be full of ideas. These days I can't think of any.
At the time, about the only thing you could do with pictures you took with your phone was sync.
Instagram was released at a critical moment in history when phone cameras were starting to get good and cellular Internet was starting to get fast enough to reliably upload them.
You can't look at the landscape today and ask "Why is instagram popular?". You have to look at it in its historical context.
Source: radio interview with the founders