Instagram is an online mobile photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networking service that enables its users to take pictures and videos, and share them on a variety of social networking platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr.
Instagram was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, and launched in October 2010 as a free mobile app. The service rapidly gained popularity, with over 100 million active users as of April 2012 and over 300 million as of December 2014.
Instagram was acquired by Facebook in April 2012 for approximately US$1 billion in cash and stock. In 2013, Instagram grew by 23%, while Facebook, as the parent company, only grew by 3%.
Below we look at the history of Instagram.com domain name and how it looked in the past compared to how it looks today.
Instagram.com was registered in 2004 over 6 years before Instagram was even launched, The original domain name appears to have been parked in 2005 and pointed to the domain name Information.com (Information.com is under GoDaddy Privacy and listed for sale at only $19,995,000 – If you have 20 Million this would be a good domain to get and still have 5K change….)
Instagram started out using the domain name Instagr.am before buying the domain name Instagram.com – Was the Instagram.com domain name sale ever reported? I cant find anything online about it? Does any domain name investors know if it was a reported sale or possible NDA deal… Either way I am sure it would have sold for Six if not Seven figures…
Here is the screenshot of Instagram.com back in 2005.
Instagr.AM in 2010 before they owned the domain name Instagram.com
January 2011 – Instagram.com domain name was still parked as below.
Instagr.AM domain name again in use in 2011 before the .com domain launch.
However by late 2011 the domain name Instagram.com has a live website redirecting you to download the Instagram App.
You can see the About Us on Instagram.com in 2011 before Facebook acquired the company in 2012, also at this time the company was using the domain name Instagr.AM and Instagram.com domain .
Fast forward to 2013 and you can see a similar look but updated version of Instagram.com
Instagram.com in 2015 again looks very similar except the handsets have been updated.
