Instagram now has 300 million active monthly users, just nine months after the photo sharing service hit 200 million. This puts Instagram ahead of microblogging service Twitter, currently at 284 million active users.
To celebrate the 300 million users, Instagram has announced it will start to offer verification for profiles. The verified tick should remove some of the parody accounts of celebrities.
Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom said “Over the past four years, what began as two friends with a dream has grown into a global community.” Systrom still maintains an active role as head of Instagram, despite the acquisition.
For the past four years Instagram has been on a steady growth upwards, despite some skeptics thinking the $1 billion Facebook acquisition would be the death of the service.
Instagram revealed 70 percent of users come from outside the U.S. and 70 million photos are shared each day, with 30 billion photos shared since the service started.
The photo sharing service is currently the fastest growing social network, in front of Pinterest and Tumblr. Twitter sits low on the rankings, with 38 million users joining the service this year; to Instagram’s 100 million.
Facebook now has four prominent mobile services: Facebook, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram. 1.3 billion people use Facebook, 600 million use WhatsApp, 500 million use Facebook Messenger and 300 million use Instagram — that’s a large online footprint.
After the Facebook acquisition in 2013, a few people decided to boycott the app, but it hasn’t stopped the overall growth. In that time, Instagram has added video, ads and various improvements to photo editing.
Something about the Instagram formula worked on mobile, while other photo sharing services like Imgur and Flickr have been unable to achieve the same success.
There is a long way for Instagram to go however, the unfiltered photo feed and separation of video and photo are needed updates. It is also unclear how much revenue Instagram makes for its growing workforce and if Facebook is still churning out cash to keep the service alive.
