What Is Instagram?

Updated October 26, 2025

What Is Instagram?

Instagram is a social media platform that allows users to share photos and videos, create stories, and engage with others through likes, comments, and direct messaging. It's known for its visual content, filters, and hashtags, which help users discover new content and profiles.

Instagram definition

Instagram is a free American photo and video-sharing social networking platform created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger and later owned by Facebook, Inc. In fact, the term “Instagram” is an amalgam of “instant photo” and “telegram”.

This app allows users to upload and edit photos as well as short videos through their mobile phones. Just like with other social networking platforms, Instagram users can comment, like and bookmark other people’s photos as well as send private messages to their friends via the Instagram Direct feature.

How Instagram works

What makes Instagram different is that users can add a caption to each of their posts and use hashtags that are location-based geotags to docket these posts and make them more visible and searchable by other users within the app.

Each post appears on the Instagram feed and is viewable by the people that follow that specific account. If hashtags are added in the caption of the picture, then the people that can reach out is considerably larger. Giving the nature of Instagram and the privacy service it offers, a user may or may not select the option whether to set their profile Private or Public.

Frequently Asked Questions

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