Instagram now has over 700 million monthly active users. The photo and video sharing app, which is owned by Facebook, added 100 million new users in just over four months. The growth rate is faster than the six months it took the popular app to grow from 500 million to 600 million users. And before that, it took the company nine months to grow from 400 million to 500 million users.
Instagram in a blog post said:
We’ve made it even easier for people across the globe to join the Instagram community, share their experiences and strengthen connections to their friends and passions. With new features like stories, live video and disappearing messages in Direct, people now have more ways than ever to express themselves and feel closer to what matters to them.
That’s a good news, especially for Facebook. Instagram goes head to head with Snapchat, which recently went public and is popular among the young crowd.
Instagram has been rolling out new features to become an alternative to Snapchat. Last year, Instagram introduced Stories, the self-destructing-message structure – one of Snapchat’s original features. Earlier this year, it introduced, Direct, a new feature that lets users share ephemeral messages, including videos and images.
Instagram Stories was introduced last year, but already has 200 million users a day. This surely has helped Instagram to beat Snapchat in the competition. In one its recent public filings, Snapchat attributed “relatively flat” growth to “increased competition”. Snapchat currently has over 161 million daily active users.
(By IndianExpress.com | Tech Desk)