Instagram says Hurricane Sandy was the largest single photographed event with over 800k photos

Hurricane Sandy was the largest single event in the history of Instagram to be photographed and captured. This according to CEO Kevin Systrom, who told the crowd at GigaOm’s RoadMap conference today, that 800,000 photos were tagged and shared on the app using the hashtag #sandy.

There’s no doubt that Hurricane Sandy was a devastating storm and people were clearly sharing their experiences with their friends and family to make sure that they were still okay and to give a first-hand account of what’s happening in their area. The photo-sharing application, now owned by Facebook, has been at the forefront of the superstorm, with TIME magazine recently sharing that it used the service to document the storm’s effects.

The number of photos collected by Instagram far exceeds the previous record holder, last year’s Super Bowl, which had 85,000 photos. It recently celebrated its second birthday this past month and has surpassed 100 million users while sharing 5 billion photos.

But what does Systrom think about Twitter doing filters? It seems that the audience would like to know as Instagram is looked at as being one of the industry’s leaders: “I don’t think that [Twitter doing filters] threatens Instagram, because Instagram is a community, not a filters app.”

Ouch! I guess there’s not animosity between Twitter and Instagram — even after Twitter’s failed bid for the company.

Photo credit: Robert Occhialini/Instagram