---
title: "Which came first, Instagram or Twitter?"
description: "Instagram vs Twitter: Twitter came first, by 4 years — 2006 against 2010. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/instagram-vs-twitter/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Instagram or Twitter?

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

2006 — 4 years before Instagram

Twitter came first, by 4 years. Jack Dorsey posted the first tweet.

## Side by side

|  | Instagram | Twitter |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 2010 | 2006 |
| Date | 2010-10-06 | 2006-03-21 |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | The app launched on iOS. | Jack Dorsey posted the first tweet. |

## 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.

## Twitter

The first tweet — "just setting up my twttr" — went out on 21 March 2006, and the service opened publicly that July. The 140-character limit came from SMS: a text message allows 160 characters and 20 were reserved for the username. When the limit doubled to 280 in 2017 the SMS constraint had been irrelevant for years.

## Common questions

### Which came first, Instagram or Twitter?

Twitter, by 4 years — 2006 against 2010.

### When did Instagram start?

2010. The app launched on iOS.

### When did Twitter start?

2006. Jack Dorsey posted the first tweet.

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## Sources

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