Instagram recently announced that they now have 800 million monthly active users. What was more interesting was that they also said that they have 500 million daily active users. Just last year, it had around 500 million monthly active users and 300 million daily active users.
So they’ve managed to almost double those numbers within a year. Earlier this year in April, it had 700 million monthly active users so they’ve managed to get 100 million more people in about 4 months. This is quite impressive especially when it comes to getting more people to use the social media app every single day which is no easy task. The main feature being attributed to this growth is the Stories feature.
Instagram Stories was launched last year and they’ve managed to keep people coming back to the app as some of us have fear of missing out since the Instagram Stories disappear after 24 hours. Even though Instagram wasn’t the first to introduce this feature as Snapchat already had it, they’ve managed to get people to use Instagram Stories more than Snapchat Stories.
This is mostly because Instagram already had a larger user base than Snapchat when they introduced that feature so more people adopted it versus Snapchat which had fewer users but was first to bring the feature. Some people do say Snapchat Stories are better but for others, the Instagram Stories are good enough so they don’t see a reason to go to Snapchat just for the added features of Stories.
So could Instagram be limiting the growth of Snapchat? Possibly. If we take a look at the numbers published by Snapchat for the second quarter of 2017, their daily active users grew from 143 million recorded in the second quarter of 2016 to 173 million.
This is an increase of 30 million or 21% within one year. Given how Instagram got the Stories feature within that year, it does seem like that happening did in a way limit the growth of Snapchat as the Stories feature was one of the unique features of Snapchat.
Facebook also announced on their Business blog that Instagram now has 2 million monthly advertisers. According to them, this is probably due to the growth in video consumption which has gone up by 80% as 4 times more videos are now being produced per day on the app compared to last year.
Given how the social media app has so many people’s attention, it makes sense for some businesses to advertise on the platform. It looks like Facebook is on its way to building quite a strong advertising network which involves all the Facebook-owned apps – Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp – all of which are boasting big numbers already.
We would like to hear your thoughts in the comments section down below. Are you a daily user of Instagram? If you are, why do you use it every day? What features would you like to see coming to the app? If you are not a daily user, why don’t you use it every day?
Share
Home