Instagram blew past a significant milestone today by hitting 500M monthly users.
The Facebook property is also over 300M daily active users with a striking acceleration of 100M new DAUs since last September.
Instagram is not a United States-centric sensation, 80% of the users are from outside the U.S.
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 photo-sharing service said. 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.
The jump in Instagram users — and their advertising-pleasing demographics — has helped Facebook bill Instagram as a buy for marketers looking to increase awareness and spur sales.
Evidence of its early commercial promise: Instagram already has more than 200,000 advertisers. Analysts say Instagram’s nascent advertising business is growing rapidly.
