---
title: "Which came first, Instagram or Java?"
description: "Instagram vs Java: Java came first, by 15 years — 1995 against 2010. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/instagram-vs-java/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Instagram or Java?

**Which came first, Instagram or Java?: Java**

1995 — 15 years before Instagram

Java came first, by 15 years. Sun Microsystems announced Java publicly.

## Side by side

|  | Instagram | Java |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 2010 | 1995 |
| Date | 2010-10-06 | 1995-05-23 |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | The app launched on iOS. | Sun Microsystems announced Java publicly. |

## Instagram

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.

## Java

Java was announced in May 1995, having started in 1991 as a project called Oak aimed at interactive television — a market that did not exist yet. Its promise was "write once, run anywhere", achieved by compiling to bytecode for a virtual machine rather than to a specific processor. JavaScript arrived seven months later and was named after it purely as a marketing decision; the two languages are unrelated.

## Common questions

### Which came first, Instagram or Java?

Java, by 15 years — 1995 against 2010.

### When did Instagram start?

2010. The app launched on iOS.

### When did Java start?

1995. Sun Microsystems announced Java publicly.

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## Sources

- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]