Popular photo sharing network Instagram has announced that there are now 100 million monthly active users, marking 11.11% growth in just over a month since its announcement of 90M MAUs last month. Instagram crosses the 100M mark just two and a half years after its 2010 launch.
Instagram was said to have 100 million total users a few months ago, but today’s measurement is of monthly actives, a metric that the company began reporting after recent terms of service changes were rumored to cut user numbers drastically.
Instagram founder Kevin Systrom shared some thoughts on the milestone in a blog post. “One night soon after launch, about a half-mile away, Giants Stadium was full of fans cheering on their team in a race for the NLCS against the Philadelphia Phillies…While we may only have had a few thousand people around the world using Instagram that night, we had a sense that maybe through Instagram we could tune in to what was happening just a few steps away.”
“With a few quick commands at his terminal, my co-founder Mike’s screen filled with images of the game: the bullpen, dugout, concession stands, cheering fans and a panoramic view from somewhere up high…Now, nearly two and a half years later, over 100 million people use Instagram every month. It’s easy to see this as an accomplishment for a company, but I think the truth is that it’s an accomplishment for our community.”
Last month, Instagram said that it handles some 40M photos per day, 8,500 likes per second and 1,000 comments per second. An engineering post that also went up last month notes that Instagram is actually handling 10,000 likes per second at peak levels now.
Some sites had claimed a falloff of 50% or more using numbers from AppData after the TOS changes. But our own Robin Wauters took a look at them and noted that almost all Facebook connected apps logged a ‘holiday dip’ and that Instagram was probably not suffering as deeply as many felt.
You can read Systrom’s full post here.
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.