Photo-Sharing Network Instagram Hits 400 Million Users Worldwide

The San Francisco-based company, bought by Facebook in 2012 for one billion dollars, said in a blog post it was “thrilled” by the milestone.

The number of people sharing pictures and videos each month using Instagram soared from 300 million at the start of this year and tops the number of people using Twitter monthly by nearly 100 million.

The blog post reads: “We are thrilled to announce that the Instagram community has grown to more than 400 million strong. While milestones like this are important, what really excites us is the way that visual communication makes the world feel a little bit smaller to every one of us.

“When Instagram launched nearly five years ago, 400 million seemed like a distant dream. Now, we continue to strive to improve Instagram – helping you experience the world through images and connect with others through shared passions.”

According to the service, more than half of the last 100 million people to join Instagram live outside the United States, with Brazil, Japan, and Indonesia seeing the strongest growth.

Earlier this month, Instagram unveiled plans to expand its offerings to advertisers, opening up possibilities for global marketing efforts on the photo-sharing network.

The expansion is intended to allow advertisers to launch global campaigns in a variety of formats including video ads of up to 30 seconds.

The new system could help Instagram generate considerably more revenue.

Instagram is seen as a potential growth segment for Facebook, which has nearly 1.5 billion users.

Instagram was created by Mr Systrom and Mike Krieger, and launched in October 2010.