Instagram Upload Psychology
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A story about how Instagram created the illusion of instant photo uploads in their early days.
"When Instagram first came out, one of the magical experiences was that when you would take a photo and post it, it would instantly load. People were amazed because back then iPhones were so bad and connections were so poor that it would take multiple minutes to upload a single photo onto the internet.
What Instagram did was separate the upload process. Instead of waiting until you had the photo, filter, and caption done to start uploading, they would let you take the photo and filter it first. Then when you hit 'next' and started writing your caption - which they knew people take about 2 minutes to write - they would upload the image in the background during that wait time.
So instead of making you wait, they did the upload while you were already doing something else. The image was already uploaded by the time you finished your caption, creating this perception of instant posting."
Shaan Puri
Host of MFM
Shaan Puri is the Chairman and Co-Founder of The Milk Road. He previously worked at Twitch as a Senior Director of Product, Mobile Gaming, and Emerging Markets. He also attended Duke University.