Instagram Takes Big 'Groufie' To Mark 5th Birthday

Say cheese! The biggest Instagram celebrity of them all -- Instagram itself -- turned 5 on Tuesday.

To mark the occasion, the photo-sharing giant celebrated appropriately: with a staff video that basically amounts to a huge groufie (a group-shot selfie).

For the sake of comparison, here's the first photo ever shared via the app:

Posted by Instagram co-founder and CEO Kevin Systrom on July 16, 2010, the photo features a random dog at a taco stand by the name of "Tacos Chilakos." The app officially launched on Oct. 6, a couple months after that pic went up.

Since then, the company has swelled to more than 400 million monthly users, who collectively post an average of more than 80 million photos each day, amounting to a total of 40 billion photos.

Of course, Instagram's meteoric rise wasn't a solo effort. Facebook acquired the company in April of 2012 for a cool $1 billion, a deal the (then) 13-person team said it was "psyched" about.

Thanks in part to support from Facebook, Instagram more than doubled its user base in four short months after the sale, leaping from from 30 million to 80 million users, including celebrities and average folk alike.

As of this writing, the top three of those celebrities are: Taylor Swift, who comes in first with 49.9 million followers; Kim Kardashian, who pulls a close second with 48 million; and Beyoncé, with a respectable 47.1 million followers.

Hey Instagram, nice work! Here's to the next 40 billion.