Instagram is the social media app launched in 2010 that popularized square photos and filters.
Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger developed Instagram after narrowing their earlier location-based project, Burbn, toward simple photo sharing. The app’s official release arrived in October 2010, initially on Apple’s App Store, and it quickly attracted users by making phone photography feel distinctive and easy to edit.
Early Instagram photos were restricted to a square 1:1 format. Built-in filters gave ordinary phone snapshots recognizable color and lighting effects, while hashtags and feeds helped images circulate beyond a user’s immediate friends. Those design choices became central to the app’s identity and influenced visual culture across other platforms.
The original square-only rule did not last forever. Instagram added portrait and landscape formats in 2015, and later expanded into video, Stories, messaging, Reels, live broadcasts, and shopping tools. Vine was primarily associated with short looping videos, Pinterest with visual bookmarking, and Snapchat with disappearing messages and camera effects, making Instagram the canonical answer here.