At today’s WIRED Business Conference, the Instagram cofounder and head of engineering sat down on stage with WIRED senior staff writer Jessi Hempel to talk a little about Instagram’s major growth as a social platform. In their discussion, the two talked about Instagram’s successes since its acquistion by Facebook, how Krieger approaches product design, and what the company is working on. But the most interesting point of the conversation was on this idea of building a product that was community-first. Back in March of 2010, Josh Riedel was Instagram’s very first hire. Hired specifically as a community manager, Riedel was brought on to help Krieger and cofounder Kevin Systrom work through the early user concerns of the company. Back then, usernames had to go through manual approval, so users wanting to change their username had to wait until either Systrom or Krieger got around to actually doing it. They realized that this delay would cause problems for them – I mean, after all, no user or customer likes to wait for anything; they simply didn’t have the resources to focus both on community building and engagement, as well as on scaling the product. So, instead of bringing in an engineer as their first hire, Instagram brought in someone to manage their growing community of users – and that’s made all the difference, enabling the company to scale quickly. Instagram has a massive community of users – with more than 200 million active on the platform every month and approximately 7 billion photos. In 2014, the photo-based social network was the fastest growing major social platform among adults in the United States – with more than 26 percent of the U.S. adult population now on the platform. By 2018, the company is expected to hit 100 million U.S. users. So, when it comes down to it: Instagram’s growth is no laughing matter; hence, making it more impressive that the company has managed to go so far despite its first hire being a community manager. And, according to Krieger, this primary focus on community is what allows them to continue to thrive despite the rise of several other competitors in this photo sharing space. They have a large and diverse community, and they’ve been able to leverage their own platform to actively engage with that community: During his discussion at the WIRED Business Conference, Krieger also talked about the biggest roadblock that the company has, especially considering the amount by which they’ve grown. According to him, Instagram’s biggest challenge now is being able to continue to move quickly: But, IMHO, the most significant thing from Krieger’s talk was…um…this:
— Ronald Barba (@RonaldPBarba) May 12, 2015
