Instagram was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger 

to simplify photo sharing with unique filters, as they saw a gap in the market for an easy-to-use mobile app for this purpose. Initially developed as part of a location-based app called Burbn, they pivoted to focus solely on photo sharing after realizing it was the most popular feature. The app was named Instagram, a portmanteau of “instant camera” and “telegram,” to emphasize its ability to share photos instantly. 

• Identifying a market gap: The founders noticed that while many photo and social sharing apps existed, there was no seamless, user-friendly way to edit and share photos from a mobile device.
• Focus on simplicity: They stripped down their original app, Burbn, to focus on just a few core features: uploading photos, adding filters, commenting, and liking.
• Leveraging mobile technology: They specifically built it as an iOS app to capitalize on the improved camera capabilities of the iPhone 4 at the time.
• Making photos look better: The app’s core hook was its ability to make ordinary photos look better and more “artsy” with filters, which was particularly valuable given the lower quality of phone cameras at the time.
• Driving virality through cross-platform sharing:They made it easy for users to share their Instagram photos to other social networks like Facebook and Twitter, which helped drive early adoption before users needed a large following on Instagram itself. 
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  Instagram was created 
  to be a simple, focused, mobile-first app for sharing photos easily and quickly. It stemmed from a need to combine photo-editing capabilities with social sharing when existing platforms like Facebook and Twitter mobile apps weren’t optimized for either function. 
  The founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, noticed several problems with existing mobile photo sharing: 
  Mobile photos often had low quality, and users wanted a simple way to make them look better.
  Uploading photos was slow and cumbersome.
  There was no streamlined way to share photos across multiple social networks at once. 
  
  The Pivot from “Burbn”
  Instagram began as a more complex, location-based check-in app called Burbn. However, the founders quickly realized that the only feature users were actively engaging with was the photo-sharing function. 
  In response, they made a strategic decision to “pivot” and stripped away all other features, focusing solely on the core photo-sharing experience. They renamed the app Instagram, a portmanteau of “instant camera” and “telegram”. 
  This simplified focus, combined with the timing of improving smartphone camera technology (like the iPhone 4), made the app an immediate success upon its launch in October 2010.