Instagram began development in which U.S. city?

Instagram began development in San Francisco. Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger developed the project there, initially calling it Burbn before reshaping it into the photo-sharing service that became Instagram.

Burbn started as a mobile check-in concept with several social features. Systrom and Krieger decided it was too similar to Foursquare and too cluttered, so they concentrated on the photo-sharing function. That pivot produced a simpler app designed around taking, editing, and posting photographs from a phone.

The San Francisco setting was also important to the company’s early network. The founders worked in the city’s technology community, raised early funding there, and developed the first native iPhone version in the Bay Area. Instagram’s initial office was associated with San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood.

Boston, Austin, and Seattle are all major technology centers, but none is the city identified in Instagram’s origin story. The question concerns where development began, not where the company was later acquired or where every employee worked.