Visually has created an infographic telling the story of the first 17 months of Instagram and the steps on its path to being bought by Facebook for a ridiculous $1 billion. Instagram, in case you don’t know, is a popular mobile photo-sharing app for iPhone and Android smartphones. It has made some huge strides just in the last few months, allowing more people than ever to post their mundane photos edited with mind-blowing old-timey filters.

Some of the highlights of Instagram’s near-instant rise to fame include the app’s release for Apple’s App Store in Novermber 2010, moving the company to Twitter’s old San Francisco offices in that same month, boasting 5 million members in June 2011, the release of version 2.0 of the app (which included live filters), and the app’s release in the Google Play app market for Android devices just last week.

What do you think? Are you worried that Facebook’s $1 billion makes Instagram a sell-out? Let me know in the comments below after you re-live the magic of Instagram, using Instagram’s and its (few) employees’ own photos:

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