Facebook-owned photo and video sharing service Instagram has achieved a new milestone in its history. According to the latest stats, the social network has now crossed the 500 million users’ line.
What this means is that the app is now closing in on the likes of Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp as well as other players such as WeChat and Viber. Both WhatsApp and Messenger are products of Facebook, with the former boasting a massive following of over 1 billion whereas the latter has over 900 million people.
As noted by Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom, it is not easy to achieve a monthly following of over 500 million people. In essence, the milestone is a symbol of the company’s desire to succeed in the so-tight social media market. Systrom is adamant that the best way of capturing the experience of the entire world is by having more than 1.5 billion users on the application, which is now over five years old.
Instagram was born in 2010 and two years later bought by Facebook for a fee of $1 billion. Back then, the photo sharing app had no more than 22 million monthly active users. After experiencing some stunted growth during the initial days of acquisition by Facebook, the app has more than doubled its user base in the past two years. In September last year, Instagram revealed that it had reached 400 million monthly active users. As of now, the app has added more than 100 million monthly active users, which has happened at a faster rate as compared to the previous 100 million users it recorded.
In addition to revealing its monthly figures, Instagram also went public with its daily figures – figures that stand at an interesting 300 million active users per day. Although more than 80% of those using this application are based outside the U.S., the North American country accounts for no less than 100 million monthly active users.