Instagram Hits 500M User Mark

Instagram number of users

Facebook’s photo sharing app Instagram is now used by over 500 million users — twice as many as two years ago.

Since last September, the app has hit a stride of onboarding active users with over 100 million being added every month. Over 80 percent of Instagrammers are now based outside the U.S., Instagram said in a blog post.

The app has also seen growth in the number of users logging in everyday. Of its 500 million users, Instagram said, about 300 million log in to the app every day.

Referring to the growing diversity of its user base, Instagram said, “Whether you’re an illustrator, a sneakerhead or an astronaut on the International Space Station, every photo and video you share helps bring people closer to friends and interests, broadens perspectives and inspires a sense of wonder.”

The growth of the photo-sharing platform underpins its transformation into a social commerce app. The app sees close to 200,000 advertisers pay for ad slots on its platform, according to Facebook’s latest earnings report, Financial Times reported. Several analysts see growth of Instagram’s advertising platform becoming a major source of Facebook’s ad revenue.

Four years after being acquired by Facebook for $1 billion, Instagram is predicted to contribute $3.2 billion to Facebook’s annual revenue this year, according to Credit Suisse. According to eMarketer, this growth could make for up to 15 percent of Facebook’s U.S. earnings this year and 8 percent of its global revenue, FT reported.

Facebook is also seeing growth on other apps that are part of its mobile offering. Its main app has an active user base of 1.6 billion, its IM app WhatsApp surpassed 1 billion users last year and its FB Messenger app has some 900 million active users.

The Menlo park-based company is now working on developing and implementing chatbots on its platform to further add to its social commerce revenue.