America’s first telegram went out in 1844. The technology revolutionised messaging in unimaginable ways. Nearly 166 years later in 2010 came Instagram, blending ‘Instant’ and ‘Telegram’. Soon, it transformed social messaging in myriad ways, creating new habits, vocations and economies and in that process powering the attention economy. It’s this incredible journey that journalist Sarah Frier profiles in No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram .
Like most recent works on social media giants and tech-economy products, No Filter is a racy read. The closest comparison can be Steven Levy’s Facebook: The Inside Story . As much as Levy’s Facebook is the story of Mark Zuckerberg, No Filter is the story of Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s ace co-founder.
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Frier maps Systrom’s struggles and success meticulously. In the process, she unravels a portrait of America’s new nerd culture — its surreal surroundings, fantasies, psychologies, ambitions of the key actors and their maniacal obsession for success and scale.
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From Facebook’s Zuckerberg to Twitter’s Jack Dorsey to Instagram’s Systrom and Mike Krieger, the commonalities are obvious and striking. They were groomed by the reigning philosophies of the Silicon Valley where most startups — more than 90% — die but those that survive rewrite history and human life in unforeseen and often alarming ways.
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Frier doesn’t apply any filters to her story. It is non-judgmental and non-partisan.
Frier’s focus, however, is not on the impact Instagram has on society. Like Levy, she too is mesmerised (and wants us to, too) by the nail-biting, edge-of-the-seat and eventful lifecycle of the product, which makes the book a riveting read. She presents Instagram’s success story as one of great timing.
It was born in Silicon Valley, in the midst of a mobile revolution, in which millions of new smartphone consumers didn’t understand what to do with a camera in their pockets, she notes. But it was the counterintuitive choices that Systrom and Krieger made that set Instagram apart.
Reason behind sell-off
But that was not to last long enough. Facebook, in an eye-popping $1 billion cash and shares deal — which became a “historic bargain in corporate acquisition history” — acquired Instagram in 2012. That was Facebook’s biggest acquisition then. Known for the predatory way it bought and dissolved rivals, Facebook, many of Instagram’s wellwishers feared, could strip the app into multiple entities and eventually bury it.
But that didn’t happen. Instagram is among Facebook’s most important assets and has more than a billion active monthly users. The numbers are growing.
Facebook couldn’t cannibalise Instagram. In 2019, Instagram posted about $20 billion in revenues. That was more than a quarter of Facebook’s overall sales. Instagram became as big as its founders thought it would become. That’s why they sold it to Facebook.
But in that process, it also added features, characters and content that made it become, according to critics, a cultural icon or a cult that exerts all kinds of wrong influence on people. It became so pretentious that it was termed the opium of the asses, eventually leading to the exit of Systrom and Krieger over how Facebook throttled their autonomy.
Frier hints at such transformations, but doesn’t go the whole hog. She ends the Instagram story with a detailed account of how the $1 billion acquisition by Facebook changed the way the photo-sharing app had been functioning and how its philosophies and work culture were tweaked.
As a former Instagram executive put it, “Everything breaks at a billion.” Instagram’s post-billion story is yet to be told. For everything else about the app, this is by far the best read.
No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram ; Sarah Frier, Simon & Schuster, ₹566 (Kindle price).