THE APP THAT BECAME INSTAGRAM AFTER REMOVING 90% OF ITS FEATURES
Before Instagram...
there was Burbn.
And Burbn was nothing like the Instagram you know today.
It had:
Check-ins
Photo sharing
Plans
Points
Location features
Messaging
and several other features.
It was trying to do almost everything.
And that was exactly the problem.
THE APP WAS TOO COMPLICATED
Burbn wasn't necessarily a bad idea.
It was just trying to solve too many problems at once.
The founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, eventually started looking at what users were actually doing.
And one feature kept standing out:
PHOTOS.
People particularly enjoyed taking and sharing them.
That changed everything.
SO THEY DID SOMETHING MOST STARTUPS DON'T WANT TO DO
They started deleting.
Not adding.
DELETING.
They removed most of Burbn's features.
The check-ins.
The plans.
The extra social features.
The complicated parts.
They kept the feature that appeared to have the strongest user interest:
PHOTO SHARING.
90% GONE
The exact percentage is often simplified when the story is told, but the underlying idea is real:
They stripped Burbn down dramatically.
Instead of:
“What else can we add?”
the question became:
“What can we remove?”
That created a much simpler product.
THEN THEY BUILT A NEW APP
The remaining concept became:
Instagram.
The core experience was incredibly simple:
TAKE A PHOTO
↓
EDIT IT
↓
SHARE IT
That's it.
No complicated dashboard.
No dozens of functions.
No giant list of things to do.
THE FILTERS MADE IT EVEN MORE INTERESTING
Instagram gave ordinary smartphone photos a more polished appearance.
You didn't need to be a professional photographer.
You didn't need expensive editing software.
You could take a picture...
choose a filter...
and immediately share it.
That made creativity feel accessible.
THE FIRST BIG LESSON
Burbn was designed around what the founders thought people might want.
Instagram was built around what people were actually doing.
That's a massive difference.
USERS WERE BASICALLY GIVING THEM PRODUCT RESEARCH FOR FREE
Imagine launching an app with:
10 features.
You expect users to love all 10.
But after watching them use it...
you discover:
Feature #4 gets almost all the attention.
You have two choices.
OPTION 1
Add another 10 features.
OPTION 2
Build the entire product around #4.
Instagram chose something much closer to Option 2.
THE RESULT WAS A MUCH CLEARER PRODUCT
Burbn:
“Here are many things you can do.”
Instagram:
“Take a photo and share it.”
The second message was incredibly easy to understand.
And easy-to-understand products are easier to adopt.
THEN THE NETWORK STARTED GROWING
People didn't just use Instagram to edit photos.
They started following:
Friends
Celebrities
Photographers
Brands
Creators
Strangers
The product evolved from a photo tool...
into a social network.
THIS CREATED A NETWORK EFFECT
More users meant:
More photos
↓
More photos meant:
More reasons to return
↓
More users joined
↓
More people to follow
↓
More content
↓
More engagement
↓
More users
The value wasn't only in the filters anymore.
It was in the network.
THEN FACEBOOK CAME KNOCKING
In 2012, Facebook announced that it would acquire Instagram for approximately:
$1 BILLION
At that point, Instagram had become something much bigger than the simple photo-sharing feature that survived the Burbn experiment.
THINK ABOUT HOW DIFFERENT THE TWO PRODUCTS WERE
BURBN
Many features
Check-ins
Plans
Points
Photos
Location
Messaging
INSTAGRAM
Photos
Filters
Sharing
Following
That's a huge transformation.
THE CRAZY PART
The founders didn't create Instagram by discovering a completely new technology.
They discovered something much more important:
WHAT PEOPLE ACTUALLY WANTED TO DO.
Then they built around it.
THE BUSINESS LOOP
COMPLICATED PRODUCT
↓
REAL USER BEHAVIOR
↓
IDENTIFY THE STRONGEST FEATURE
↓
REMOVE DISTRACTIONS
↓
SIMPLER PRODUCT
↓
MORE USERS
↓
NETWORK EFFECT
↓
MASSIVE BUSINESS
The breakthrough came from subtraction.
THIS IS WHY "MORE FEATURES" CAN BE DANGEROUS
Every feature adds:
Development
Maintenance
Complexity
Confusion
Support costs
And sometimes...
nothing useful.
A product can become worse by becoming bigger.
THE INTERESTING QUESTION FOR ANY BUSINESS
Instead of asking:
“What should we add?”
Ask:
“What would happen if we removed half of this?”
Then:
“What if we removed half again?”
Eventually you might discover what customers actually came for.
SIMPLE IDEA
Burbn tried to give people many reasons to use the app.
Instagram focused on one thing people already loved.
The difference wasn't just the number of features.
It was the clarity of the product.
MAACAT PERSPECTIVE
One of the biggest social networks in the world came from a product that was too complicated.
The founders didn't solve the problem by adding more.
They solved it by removing.
Burbn had more features.
Instagram had more focus.
And sometimes...
removing 90% of the product is how you find the 10% that matters.
