What does Instagram teach young entrepreneurs?

Starting a business is just a small application that creates effects for photos on the iPhone, after 2 years of operation with 11 Instagram employees who own a community of up to 30 million people and have just been bought by Facebook for $ 1 billion.

Let's take a look at the characteristics that make Instagram's success and lessons for young people passionate about starting a business.

1. Build a solid foundation: Simple and Good Running

Simple and useful is the main feature of Instagram.

Instagram is not the first application to share photos on mobile environments. But it is the simplicity and its convenience that make it an advantage compared to other competitors. The main application is the camera effect and the sharing is focused on the main line, removing many features such as timeline, grouping photos, tagging friends . Helping the user experience higher and costly less time than when using other applications.

The interface is beautifully cut, not trying to cram too many distractions and troublesome things. If for other applications when registering to use, you need to fill in a lot of information such as birth date, gender etc., then ask you to activate email to be able to use the service. Then Instagram only requires 3 data: email, username and password to be able to use this application right away. The application buttons are beautifully designed, simple and effective. Users will not feel awkward, leading to saving time for getting acquainted and spending more time on the core experience of this application.

2. Have patience (User = Data = $$$)

User data serves ads more effectively.

Not sacrificing the user experience in exchange for finance is what we can say about Instagram. Since the establishment until now Instagram has never had a bit of profit, all operating funds come from economic organizations, Baseline Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. The main thing that makes Instagram's value is Facebook's user data and money-making capabilities from those data.

Instagram cannot be able to use user data for business by advertising within its app. That will go against the inherent value and will kill Instagram. Instead, Facebook acts as the main money maker of Instagram. When Instagram people share content on Facebook, Facebook will use that information and display ads related to the photos. Therefore, when the number of users increases, Facebook will collect more and more user information, thereby improving the effectiveness of advertising on both mobile platforms and personal computers.

3. Identify individual customers (Small but good potential)

The age of Instagram users is younger than the age of Facebook users.

Instagram has a vision of the right user. Instagram builds the main goal for the app to share images. The question is: who will be the first user to target such a large market? Instagram found that the community of photography enthusiasts has always been a big community in technology society.

Building and holding a specialized community is a wise step in the fierce competition of social networks. Instagram has won the initial success when the overall ground of the photo is quite high instead of the variety of quality as other social networks. Once you have a trustworthy foundation, there will be many users who are interested and involved in the community.

4. Take care of customers, feed the community to develop it

Instagram has been somewhat fortunate to create such a platform and user community. but it is the developers' support and support moves that are the source of the power to feed it. PR activities are indispensable for developing a strong community.

The two founders participated in almost all blogs and forums to promote their image. Over time, they play a very important role in brand recognition and a prerequisite for promoting the form of word of mouth advertising, the most effective and popular form of advertising between consumers. used together.

Kevin Systrom, Instagram's CEO at a technology conference.

There are many similarities with Apple, Instagram is not the creator of new things. But it is the simplicity of the product that brings special and success in the current competitive time. Will after the deal with Facebook, Instagram still retain their own character and community? That depends heavily on the link with Facebook and the company's development strategy. But one thing is for sure, Instagram will have a long development path ahead.