It’s Instagram’s 10th birthday! Happy birthday say Instagrammers…

A popular hashtag on Instagram today is #HappyBirthdayInstagram. With colourful greetings and GIFs, Instagrammers are celebrating the media-sharing app’s 10th birthday, today. Some even made special cakes to celebrate.

To celebrate its birthday, Instagram has launched several new features. This includes Stories Map, which is a private map and calendar of the stories you’ve shared in the last three years, a product timeline, which is a visual timeline of Instagram’s major milestones. And, a surprise in the app. In case you can’t find it, here’s a video of it shared by social media user @kosmowskipat on Twitter.

As a part of its birthday surprise, Instagram is letting users customise the app icon on their phone. With the new update, Instagram users across both iOS and Android can opt between a range of Instagram icons in shades of orange, yellow, green, purple, black, white, and more. Earlier versions of the Instagram icon are also available to choose from.

Instagram launched on October 6, 2010, by Kevin Systrom, took the social media world by storm. Just on day one, the app racked up 25,000 users. From the beginning, the primary focus of the app was to feature photographs, specifically those taken on mobile devices. Just two years later, in 2012, Facebook acquired the company for $1 billion in cash and stock.

According to 2020 data, Instagram now has over 1 billion users who have shared more than 50 billion photos. These numbers are from before the world stopped moving due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As people stayed back home to stay safe, many took to Instagram to share photos and videos of themselves spending time at home, their pets, discovering new hobbies, and recipes.

Viral challenge trends like #dalgonacoffee and #fliptheswitch kept people occupied and safe.