(Source: http://blog.sticky9.com/post/11095149810/happy-birthday-instagram-hard-to-believe-its)

The billion-dollar photo sharing social media platform turns five today! It’s growth since 2010 has been profound, now boasting approximately 400 million users on the app. This article (http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/instagram-birthday-how-old-a6682021.html) talks about some of the trends that have been established through Instagram, one of which is that a large number of influencers including celebrities and political figures have begun to take to Instagram instead of traditional media outlets to make important announcements. Whether it’s an engagement, a new addition to the family or big career moves, people have started to use Instagram to directly communicate with their audience and fans to let them know first-hand any changes in their lives.

Another interesting trend is that the top three accounts on Instagram all belong to women (Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian and Beyonce). We can see that Instagram may be helping to perpetuate the concept of ‘girl power’ and it seems that users are more interested in following women than men. Another statistic is that the most liked photo on Instagram at the moment belongs to Kendall Jenner and racks up a total of 3.1 million times. That alone shows how wide the reach of this platform is and how much engagement is possible through the usage of this platform.

Personally, Instagram has always been my favourite social media platform compared to others like Facebook or Snapchat as Facebook has a tendency to become too cluttered and noisy while Snapchat is so temporary. Instagram has become almost like a visual diary for many people including myself and I am grateful that it was birthed 5 years ago as a tiny San Francisco startup with 13 employees.

Happy Birthday again, Instagram!