---
title: "Which came first, Instagram or YouTube?"
description: "Instagram vs YouTube: YouTube came first, by 5 years — 2005 against 2010. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/instagram-vs-youtube/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Instagram or YouTube?

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

2005 — 5 years before Instagram

YouTube came first, by 5 years. The domain was registered; the first video followed in April.

## Side by side

|  | Instagram | YouTube |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 2010 | 2005 |
| Date | 2010-10-06 | 2005-02-14 |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | The app launched on iOS. | The domain was registered; the first video followed in April. |

## 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.

## YouTube

The youtube.com domain was registered on Valentine's Day 2005, the first video — "Me at the zoo", 19 seconds of a co-founder at San Diego Zoo — was uploaded on 23 April, and the site opened publicly in the winter. Google bought it in November 2006 for $1.65 billion, about twenty months after the domain was registered. It is younger than Facebook by a year and older than Twitter by one.

## Common questions

### Which came first, Instagram or YouTube?

YouTube, by 5 years — 2005 against 2010.

### When did Instagram start?

2010. The app launched on iOS.

### When did YouTube start?

2005. The domain was registered; the first video followed in April.

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## Sources

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