Instagram Users Hit 300M, Catching Up With Twitter

Photo credit: Instagram.com

Today in an official blog post, Instagram announced that its base has hit 300 million active users. This signals an impressive benchmark: Instagram is officially bigger than Twitter, which reported 284 million active users just over a month ago.

Instagram usage is spreading like wildfire. Purchased by Facebook in 2012 for the cool price of $1 million, Instagram also announced a new feature: “verified badges,” which will serve much like Twitter’s blue verification check mark does, an official mark of authenticity deployed for celebrity, brand and athlete accounts.

According to Instagram, users share more than 70 million photos and videos each day, with 70% being posted from outside the U.S. “Over the past four years, what began as two friends with a dream has grown into a global community,” says Instagram CEO, Kevin Systrom.

Around our offices at least, Instagram is the social medium du jour for photo sharing. As one Delucchian notes, “It’s like Facebook, minus everything that’s annoying about Facebook. Fewer ads, no superfluous features, fewer weird posts from distant relatives clogging up your feed.”

So far, Instagram has been able to hold onto its monopoly on authenticity: With relatively limited ads, it’s still a safe place for people who don’t want to be bombarded with paid content. We’d hazard a guess that with the rapidly growing audience and potential for revenue, this could be changing soon. In the meantime, Twitter might have to step up its game.