Instagram Reaches 400 Million Monthly Active Users

Facebook’s many messaging apps continue to grow in popularity, with the latest report being that Instagram now has an impressive 400 million monthly active users, thereby sailing past Twitter, which currently has 316 million monthly active users. It took nine months for the photo-sharing app to gain its latest 100 million regular users, and the company used the addition of celebrities to help it grow, including soccer star David Beckham and Caitlyn Jenner, who recently received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at ESPN’s annual awards ceremony.

In a blog post announcing this milestone, Instagram wrote that more than 75 percent of its users live outside of the United States. Additionally, of the latest 100 million people who have become users, more than half of them live in Europe and Asia.

“We are thrilled to announce that the Instagram community has grown to more than 400 million strong,” wrote the company. “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.”

Facebook’s risky strategy of creating separate apps seems to be paying off massively. The extremely popular texting app, WhatsApp, which Facebook acquired for $19 billion in 2014, recently reached a staggering 900 million monthly users, according to its founder Jan Koum. And Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in June that the company’s standalone Messenger app had more than 700 million users.

However, in the past, Zuckerberg has boldly stated that he doesn’t think about a service as a real business until it reaches 1 billion users. By that standard, Instagram has a long way to go, and it has taken the photo-sharing app almost five years to reach its current user numbers. At the same time, while Instagram can be seen as a niche lifestyle app, WhatsApp is more of a global utility, and Messenger has certainly benefited from its deep connection to the incredibly popular Facebook.

Regardless, none of these numbers seem to have slowed Facebook down in developing its Instagram business strategy, as it continues to test new ad formats and to introduce features that are aimed at helping marketers track ads more effectively. Certainly, for advertisers and social media marketers, Instagram’s growth means that an increasing amount of their energy and ad dollars will be focused on the platform.

Will Instagram eventually reach 1 billion users, thereby hitting Zuckerberg’s mark of success? Only time will tell, but its current milestone of 400 million monthly active users is certainly already impressive, and it will be very interesting to watch how it progresses in the near future.

“When Instagram launched nearly five years ago, 400 million seemed like a distant dream,” the blog post continued. “Now, we continue to strive to improve Instagram – helping you experience the world through images and connect with others through shared passions.”