400 Million Users, Added 100 Million In Past 9 Months Alone — Instagram

Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)’s photo sharing application Instagram has achieved a record 400 million users in 5 years. The photo sharing app is growing at a faster rate than Facebook, but slower than Messenger and WhatsApp.

Even more impressive than its swift growth is how worldwide Instagram’s reach is.

What’s rather fascinating is the fact that the mobile app had 300 million users just 9 months back.

Among the most followed accounts include those of retired football player David Beckham (@davidbeckham), reality television personality Caitlyn Jenner (@caitlynjenner) and K-pop star T.O.P ( @choi_seung_hyun_tttop). Inspiring moments are also highlighted in the company’s blogpost.

It’s designed to create excitement around events like film premieres and product launches. eMarketer, an industry tracker, estimates Instagram’s global ad revenue will rise quickly with these new developments. Pinterest is also the home for many users uploading photos, though these tend to be less personal. The application said 75 percent of its clients live outside of the U.S. Indonesia, Japan and Brazil are the three countries with most Instagrammers.

Instagram has slowly begun offering advertising options as well, and so far the company has said it’s pleased with results. According to the social media site, Instagram’s user base has shot up from 300 million in December 2014 to 400 million today.

Among social networking apps, Facebook has 1.44 billion monthly active users, while Twitter has 316 million monthly active users. Since the start of this year Instagram is beefing up its efforts to make its advertising format more appealing to advertisers to turn itself into a cash cow for Facebook.