It was 12:15am, October 6th and we had been working on the app non-stop, day and night for 8 weeks. With a bit of hesitation, I clicked the button that launched “Instagram” live to the Apple app store. We figured we’d have at least 6 hours before anyone discovered the app so we could grab some shut-eye. No problem, we figured.

Within a few minutes, they started pouring in. People from places like Japan, France, New York, started signing up in droves. The night of sleep we were hoping for turned into a few meager hours before we rushed into the office to add capacity to the service.

Now, only a couple months later, we’re happy to announce that our community consists of more than a million registered users. But why is this important?

We believe it’s the beginning of something bigger. When we started working on Instagram, we tried to imagine what the world would be like if everyone could contribute media to an open, transparent, and international community. For a startup with 80 users at the time, this was a big hairy audacious goal. Little did we know that within a few short weeks we’d see more images from all over the world than we could have ever imagined. It was both rewarding and humbling to see people embrace Instagram as both a new home on their iPhone - and a new way of communicating visually with people around the world. We believe this is only the beginning. With 6.7 billion people in the world, we’re a tiny fraction of the way there, but we’re extremely happy with the progress.

So as we close out on 2010, the first couple months of being live, and welcome the new year, we’d like to extend our greatest thanks to each and every one of the million folks who have taken the time to participate in Instagram by sharing small moments of life through gorgeous mobile photos.

Happy New Year, and here’s to many more!

Sincerely,

Kevin + The Instagram Team

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