Instagram finally hits 300 million users, now officially bigger than Twitter

Facebook’s photo and video sharing service Instagram announced that it has passed the 300 million user threshold. With that many users, the service officially has more users than microblogging social network Twitter which had about 284 million users a few weeks ago. At the sidelines of the announcement, the company also said that it will be introducing verified profiles for public figures and companies.Instagram gained 50 percent new users in last 9 months. The company had announced in March that it had hit 200 million users. Twitter only added about 38 million new users since March. The company also asserts that more than 70 percent of its users are from outside the United States. The engagement on the service is impressive, too. The company says that 70 million photos are being shared each day. It is tapping on the fact that many users like visual posts and videos. Facebook and Twitter have been changing their news feed over the past year to make it look better, but Instagram seemingly figured it out long back.

One issue, however it does have is spam accounts and imposters, and the company wants that changed as well. It announced that it will begin verifying celebrities, athletes and brands soon. This move helped both Facebook and Twitter become more credible. Furthermore, the company said that it will delete the spam accounts instead of just suspending them. Launched in October 2010, the photo and video sharing social network was exclusively available on iPhone for two years. It wasn’t until April of 2012 when the company launched an Android app. The same month, it was bought by Facebook for $1 billion. Last year, the service also launched a Windows Phone app.

IMPORT:-bgr