As we all know, it is a social networking and free photo-sharing mobile app which is best suited for smartphones. This mobile application will allow you to share, take, and edit short videos and pictures with the opportunity of using various filters to alter the looks of the photos and videos.
The developers of Instagram actually credit most of their accomplishment in picking the correct tools intelligently by following three core principles:
- Do not reinvent the wheel
- Keep it simple
- Go with solid and proven technologies if possible.
Nevertheless, a lot of people want to know the technology behind this social network, especially now people can buy followers. Yes, you can now buy it on Instagram, in fact, you can click here for amazing deals.
Either way, let’s go back to the main topic which is Instagram technology. Much like other social media platforms, IG also utilized a lot of technologies. Keep on reading and find out the technologies that make this social media platform successful.

Technology Behind Instagram
- Hosting/Operating System
It runs “Natty Narwhal (Ubuntu Linux version 11.04) on Amazon EC2. Though the developers found out that lower versions of Ubuntu had varieties of random freezing incidents on Amazon EC2, they are certain the Linux 11.04 has been firm.
- Data Storage
The majority of Instagram’s data like tags, metadata, user, and photos are stored in PostgreSQL. In addition to that, their primary shard cluster consists of twelve quadruple extra-large memory illustrations as well as 12 replicas in a diverse area.
However, all of their PostgreSQL illustrations run in a replica set-up by means of Streaming Replication.
When it comes to taking frequent backups for their systems, Instagram utilizes EBS snapshotting.
And similar to other web services, it also utilizes Memcached for caching. In fact, they already have six Memcached instances.

- App Servers
The application servers are the ones that handle Instagram’s request. They run Django on Amazon High-CPU Extra-Big machinery.
Instagram, on the other hand, make use of Gunicorn as their WSGI server since it is less CPU-intensive and simpler to configure.
When it comes to running commands, deploying code, for instance, the developers utilize Fabric. In fact, it deploys code in just a matter of seconds.
- Task Queue and Push Notifications
When Instagram users decide to share an image to either Facebook or Twitter, the task will be pushed to German, it’s a task queue method that is initially written at Danga.
Performing it asynchronously over the task backlog means that the photos and videos will be uploaded quickly. Instagram, have 200 workers written in Python overriding the task backlog at any given period.

The developers also perform their feed fan-out in the task queue method so that posting will become responsible for new users.
With regards to performing push notifications, Instagram found out that SamuraisamPyapns is an effective solution. This open-source service has been solid and handles a lot of push notifications for them.
Conclusion
There you have it, the different technologies behind the successful Instagram. Hopefully, this content has given you a sneak peek of how this social media platform made and process data.