9781422277294

Introduction: A Global Phenomenon

tion services. The main idea was that people using the app could “check in” to let people knowwhere they were at any given time. Back in 2009, when Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger were brainstorming the idea, the most popular location-services app was something called Foursquare. Not only could users check in at various places on Foursquare, but if they checked in enough times at, for instance, a certain coffee shop, they might earn a free latte there. As fate would have it, there were many tech companies and startups trying to copy the success of Foursquare. Systrom and Krieger started to think maybe their product would get lost amid the heavy competition in the location services market. The app they were working on was multifaceted—it included many fea- tures. So they made a decision: Rather than promote an app that did this, that, and the other thing, let’s make an app that focuses on one thing and does that one thing really well. There were plenty of photo-sharing apps on the market before Instagram launched, and there were several social media networks as well. But Instagram’s ability to create a social media network based on photo-sharing distinguished it from the com- petition and set itself up to become one of the leading technology companies in the world.

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