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Instagram was launched in October of 2010. Kevin and Mike's main purpose for the app was to be a photo-sharing app where friends could share moments, meet up with other friends, and have good times. At the time, it wasn't intended to be something like Facebook, but as popularity grew, the style of the app eventually turned into another version of Facebook.
Instagram was created because of a project. The project was to be a multi-featured check-in project, Burbn. Systrom and Krieger decided to focus their project on mobile photography.They named it "Instagram", a portmanteau of "insta" and "gram." After 2 months of development, Instagram was released, and its popularity gained fast. After being buried in success, Systrom and Krieger decided to add more features to make the users' experience better. At the beginning of 2011, Instagram added hashtags to help users discover both photographs and each other. They also added filters to enhance photos. After a few years of success, Instagram added Direct, a system where people could privately message and send photos to their followers, which is today's latest update.