Instagram reached more than 500 million users this month, the Facebook-owned company announced in a blog post on Thursday. About 300 million of those users are active every day and live outside the United States.
About 80 percent of Instagram’s users logging outside the U.S., from the 75 percent of last year. This is due to the success the company has been having in countries such as Japan, Germany, France and Indonesia, as reported by Techcrunch.
“Whether you are 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,” Instagram wrote in its blog post announcing the milestone amount. “You have made Instagram a place where the every day and the epic are always within reach.”
Instagram even increased the gap between the photo-sharing social media and Twitter, which Instagram passed in users back in 2014. Also, Instagram is also as twice as big as Snapchat users database.
When Instagram was asked about its success by Josh Constine from Techcrunch, the company stated that it is due to its expansion in certain foreign countries and that it has gotten good at connecting new and old users with different interest such as food and sports through Explore. This category now features a Snapchat-like collection of the best videos of the moment.
An unwelcomed decision
Even though the discontent did not appear to have interfered with Instagrammers activities, the company did have some unwelcomed decision since the beginning of the year. The fact that the photo-sharing app changed its algorithm to prioritize some content generated mistrust in some of their followers.
Some critics said that the new algorithm will only show things that the user has already shown interest, or worse, that executives could skew content on a newsfeed to reinforce liberal or conservative points of view, as reported by the Christian Science Monitor.
However, Co-founder and chief executive of Instagram Kevin Systrom defended the new decision during an interview with the New York Times. According to Systrom, people miss about 70 percent of the posts in their Instagram feed, and the new algorithm is about making sure that the 30 percent of the content they see is the best one.
Another significant unwelcomed decision was the change of its logo. Instagram replaced the traditional camera icon with an abstract and colorful logo recently. The logo was allegedly designed to be simpler, iconic, and consistent with the flattened iOS look on Apple devices.
But logo changes are commonly unpopular, mostly those logos that its change is above the perception line of its customers. Systrom even acknowledged during his interview with BBC that he knew before its launch that it would be a tough time for Instagram.
“If it is one thing we do really well as a company, it is that we take big change slowly and deliberately and bring the community along with us,” Systrom told The New York Times. “It is not like people will wake up tomorrow and have a different Instagram.”
Source: Instagram