Which came first, email or Instagram?
email came first, by 39 years. Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers and chose the @ sign.
Side by side
| Year | 1971 | 2010 |
|---|---|---|
| Date | — | 2010-10-06 |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers and chose the @ sign. | The app launched on iOS. |
Messages had been left for other users of the same machine since the mid-1960s. What Tomlinson did in 1971 was send one between two different computers on ARPANET, and pick @ to separate the user from the host because it was the only preposition on the keyboard that could not appear in a name. He did not record the first message and later said it was probably "QWERTYUIOP" or similar. Email is eighteen years older than the Web.
Instagram launched in October 2010 as an iPhone-only app and took 25,000 users on its first day. Facebook bought it in April 2012 for about $1 billion when it had thirteen employees and no revenue. It is four years younger than Twitter and six years older than TikTok.
Common questions
- Which came first, email or Instagram?
- email, by 39 years — 1971 against 2010.
- When did email start?
- 1971. Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers and chose the @ sign.
- When did Instagram start?
- 2010. The app launched on iOS.
Related pages
- Apple or email? email
- the internet (ARPANET) or email? the internet (ARPANET)
- the internet (ARPANET) or Instagram? the internet (ARPANET)
- email or Pakistan? Pakistan
- email or India? India
- email or Microsoft? email
- email or the Macintosh? email
- email or Windows? email
- email or the World Wide Web? email
- email or Python? email
- email or Java? email
- email or JavaScript? email
Sources
- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)