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In March 2010 Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger raised $500,000 for a company called burbn, a platform that would later be renamed Instagram and which would eventually fall under the ownership of Facebook after being purchased for $1 billion. From zero to 30 million users in just 17 months Instagram is a cultural and business success.

In celebration of Instagram’s sale to Facebook the team at Visual.ly has put together an infographic that showcases the apps rise to meteoric success. There are very few apps that can release on Google Android to 1 million app downloads in 24 hours and 5 million downloads in just 6 days but Instagram is that app.

Jon Stewart recently quipped:

“A billion dollars of…money?  For a thing that kind of ruins your photos?”

While Jon may have been talking about Instagram in jest the company has done no wrong since launching, from securing $500,000 then $7 million and $50 million in separate funding rounds the company acquired the right talent, managed its community with ease and ultimately created a fun product that takes social photo sharing to a whole new level that other photo platforms have not yet been able to compete with.