Instagram has just hit another user milestone.
According to the company, it now has 400 million users. It hit 300 million back in December of 2014, so the photo-oriented social network took less than a year to snag the next 100 million users.
“Our community has evolved to be even more global, with more than 75 percent living outside of the US. To all the new Instagrammers: welcome! Among the last 100 million to join, more than half live in Europe and Asia. The countries that added the most Instagrammers include Brazil, Japan and Indonesia,” says Instagram.
“When Instagram launched nearly five years ago, 400 million seemed like a distant dream. Now, we continue to strive to improve Instagram — helping you experience the world through images and connect with others through shared passions.”
“The Instagram community now has 400 million people active monthly! Congrats to Kevin, Mike and the entire Instagram community on reaching another big milestone. Kevin and I celebrated the moment by going for a walk on our roof to talk about the future of Instagram. I’m excited for the journey ahead,” said Mark Zuckerberg in a Facebook post.
Where does 400 million monthly active users put Instagram in the rankings? Well, it’s now blazed past Twitter, which only boasts about 316 million users (but that’s not the whole story, according to Twitter).
Other Facebook property WhatsApp just hit 900 million users – though the metrics on messaging users are somewhat open for interpretation. Facebook, of course, still leads the pack with a whopping 1.49 billion MAUs.
Instagram isn’t just growing its user base – its user base is spending significantly more time on Instagram. A recent Pew study found that 59% of users use the service every day – up from 49% last year.
Of course, the next frontier for Instagram is true monetization. The company has been careful as to not overwhelm the userbase with ads – but more are coming, as it’s been slowly opening advertising up to more and more. And most are pretty pleased with the performance so far.
Image via Mark Zuckerberg