As others said, instagram wasn't the first to do this, and that is certainly not why they were bought out for 1 billion or why so many users adopted the service. Instagram didn't fill a huge gap, they made something people wanted to use. The article misses a couple beats, but I don't think the focus of it is completely misguided. A valuation and a buy out like this does not happen very often, and when it does happen, it draws the wrong kind of attention. All of a sudden a lot of people think they can do the exact same thing, that they can spend some time on the weekend and release a better version of instagram, then BAM money--fame. It's just now how things work.

I don't think instagram is completely invulnerable to the market. As a user of it, I'd happily adopt a different service that did the exact same thing better, and I don't think I'm alone. So in that sense, this article misses the mark. But I'd rather read this article than one that tells people they can do it too. It's a once-and-a-lifetime valuation. The service itself may be reproduceable but the results far from it, and in that vein the article speaks the truth. Your time is better spent elsewhere.