Instagram now has more than 400 million monthly active users

There’s no doubt in my mind that Facebook considers Instagram a worthwhile acquisition. The photo-sharing service has been growing at a rapid pace these past couple of years, even outpacing Facebook itself by adding 100 million people to its list of monthly active users in just nine months. That’s right, Instagram confirmed in a blog post earlier today that, in less than a year, it managed to go from 300 million monthly active users to 400 million, which puts it well ahead of Twitter in terms of both growth and number of active users. 

Instagram has rocketed past the 400-million-user mark, with more than 80 million pictures shared daily at the Facebook-owned service. The number of people sharing pictures and videos each month using Instagram soared from 300 million at the start of this year and tops the number of people using Twitter monthly by nearly 100 million. “While milestones like this are important, what really excites us is the way that visual communication makes the world feel a little bit smaller to every one of us,” Instagram said in a blog post. “Instagrammers continue to capture incredible photos and videos from all corners of the Earth (and even the solar system).” More than half of the last 100 million people to join Instagram live in Europe or Asia, with Brazil, Japan, and Indonesia seeing the strongest growth, according to the service. The list of high-profile new Instagram users who quickly won legions of followers included David Beckham, Caitlyn Jenner and footballer Toni Kroos.