Kevin Systrom explains how he made Instagram go viral

May 29, 2025

While Instagram was still in beta, Kevin created a one-page PDF that explained the product and sent it with a personalized email to every high-profile in person in tech.

Kevin’s initial hope was that a few would try the beta, but he was shocked when about half them wrote back saying they loved it. And a few people like Jack Dorsey even tweeted it out. Encouraged by this success, Kevin reached out to design and photography thought leaders on Twitter.

One key takeaway is that people actually loved the product. This strategy probably wouldn’t have worked if the product was bad.

Another is that you go viral by getting people with large audiences to share it with their audience. In his book Hit Makers, Derek Thompson argues that while most people believe products go viral through friends telling friends, that’s usually not the case. Products usually explode when people with large audiences share it:

“The gospel of virality has convinced some marketers that the only way that things become popular these days is by buzz and viral spread. But these marketers vastly overestimate the reliable power of word of mouth. Much of what outsiders call virality is really a function of what one might call ‘dark broadcasters’—people or companies distributing information to many viewers at once, but whose influence isn’t always visible to people outside of the network.”