Instagram now boasts around 400 million users, many sharing their exquisite lives through carefully selected and filtered images and many more gazing on adoringly.
The app is now celebrating its fifth birthday and that’s caused co-founder and CEO Kevin Systrom to get a little soppy when talking about his baby. Founded together with Mike Krieger the pair flogged the app for a whopping $1 billion to Facebook back in 2012, although they remain closely involved with all aspects of its development.
You can hear Systrom wax lyrical about what lies ahead for Instagram, although TIME says it won’t all be plain sailing:
Instagram has been facing increasing competition from Snapchat and Periscope, two services that favor [sic] video over still images. And while Instagram users are already able to share 15-second videos, the company is looking at expanding its video features. “Video is going to be increasingly important,” says Systrom, pointing at how data transfer on wireless networks is becoming faster and cheaper. “For Instagram to succeed in the long run, video has to be a core part of not only what we’re good at, but also what the community produce[s]. So we’re very focused on video. We produced a product called Hyperlapse that lets you take stabilized time-lapse videos. And [that’s] a toe in the water [in terms of] video production tools that might come in the future.”
All those new video features do sound awesome, although it will only be a matter of time until Kylie Jenner ruins it for everyone.
Long live Instagram, long live inspirational pictures about living life to the fullest and long live those whose quest for self-gratification fuels hearty chuckles throughout the day.
[source:time]
