Instagram photo-sharing app features and restrictions

A Story by Meena Raj

What is Instagram?

Instagram is a photo and video sharing platform which is founded by Kevin Systrom and Mike Systrom in 2010. First, Instagram was only launched for iOS and now it has extended its reach to android and another major operating system on mobile phones. It became so popular that in its first year of launch it got nearly 10 million registered users. Today, it has more than 1 billion active users on its platform. And people are around the world are using to share their day to day memories with their friends and family. Instagram has also introduced stories, which is inspired by Snapchat stories. And now their stories features is even more popular than Snapchat. As it is being used 500 million users around the globe.

On April 9, 2012, Instagram was acquired by Facebook for $1 billion in cash and stock deal. And it was promised by Mark Zuckerberg that they will keep Instagram Independent from Facebook.

Popular accounts on Instagram

Cristiano Ronaldo has the most popular Instagram celebrity account with 191 million followers.

List of top 10 Instagram accounts:

Instagram (316m followers)
Cristiano Ronaldo (189m followers)
Ariana Grande (167m followers)
Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson (161m followers)
Selena Gomez (161m followers)
Kim Kardashian (151m followers)
Kylie Jenner (151m followers)
Lionel Messi (136m followers)
Beyoncé (134m followers)
Neymar (128m followers)

Features of Instagram

Initially, Instagram was just a photo-sharing app but now it has introduced more features which makes it more than just a photo-sharing app. Now, users can upload short videos in their Instagram feed. Instagram used to allow only square-shaped photos to be uploaded on its services but now it has changed that rule and users can even their favorite photos in landscape shape too.

Users can use the zoom feature to zoom-in and zoom-out photos inside the Instagram application but not inside the website of Instagram. And in its starting day's people were allowed to upload a single photo in a single post but now this has been abolished and you can upload up to ten photos in a single Instagram post.

Short videos can be uploaded in an Instagram feed that has a maximum duration of 15 seconds. If users are looking to upload videos in a longer duration then they can use the igtv, which is a video sharing application by Instagram. In igtv, users will be able to upload videos with a duration of 10 minutes and a maximum size of 650 Mb.

They have now introduced dark mode for the Instagram app. Which is compatible to work with iOS 13 and Android 10.

Restrictions on Instagram

Instagram has a lot of restrictions on its platform as compared to other social media platforms. You are not allowed to add hyperlinks in comments or caption and you can only add up to ten photos in a single Instagram post. A hyperlink can only be added to the Instagram bio of the profile. One of the major restrictions on its platform is that it does not allow users to download photos and videos of users. There is no built-in feature for downloading photo. So, to save photos in mobile or desktop users use an Instagram photo downloader. People just need to get the link of the photo that they want to download and they can download it using it.

© 2019 Meena Raj

Author's Note

If you want to download media from Instagram then you can use Instagram photo downloader for downloading photos and Instagram video downloader for downloading videos from it.