Instagram’s growth reaches 500 million monthly users
Instagram now reaches more than 500 million people each month, lengthening its lead over Twitter and underscoring Facebook’s beachhead of popular mobile apps with escalating growth around the globe.
Instagram more than doubled in size over the past two years, adding 100 million active users faster than the previous 100 million, the Facebook-owned photosharing service said.
More than 80 per cent of users are from outside the U.S. On average, more than 95 million photos and videos are shared each day.
The growth announcement underscored the deepening straits for Twitter, which is struggling to revive growth yet is stuck at about 300 million monthly users. Instagram hit 400 million users in September.
Facebook has spread its tentacles into the messaging boom after building the world’s most popular social network, buying Instagram for $1 billion in cash and stock in 2012.
Facebook also owns two other of the world’s most popular apps: WhatsApp, which it bought for billions and has 1 billion users, and its homegrown app, Facebook Messenger, which hit 900 million users in April.
“Facebook itself captures enormous amounts of people’s attention on their mobile devices, and that’s hugely powerful. But there will always be alternatives either in broad use or in use by demographic or geographic segments,” said Jan Dawson, chief analyst with Jackdaw Research.
Instagram, for example, is popular with teens.
“Facebook has arguably been deploying the candy bar strategy — own as many of the brands on the shelf as possible to maximize your market share,” Dawson said.
The exception: Snapchat, the mobile app popular with young people which Facebook tried to buy twice.
Analysts say Instagram’s nascent advertising business is growing rapidly.
Research firm eMarketer expects Instagram’s global mobile ad revenue to reach $1.53 billion this year and more than $5 billion by 2018.