gram - is a metric system unit of mass, can they trademark it?
Trademarks aren't about owning a word, only about having exclusive use of it within a certain domain. If Instagram is successful, you will still be allowed to use the SI unit to quantify mass. You won't be able to market a competing product or service with the same name.
Example If I make a product called GoldGram, that will display trend prices for gold gram - it will be violating trademark?
Carlsberg managed to register 'probably' in the context of beer and food:
https://tmdb.eu/trademark/008349227/eu/en/probably
and Specsavers recently won 'Should've' in the UK, to be referred to the EU level now, though thankfully they had their application narrowed-down to eyewear and medical devices.