Facebook #1 with 1.35 billion users/month.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: Instagram announced Tuesday that 300 million global users access their website on a monthly basis. That puts it firmly ahead of Twitter, which garners 284 million active users per month according to their own statistics.
Instagram appeals to a young demographic and resonates significantly with 18 to 24 year olds, most of whom are outside the United States.
India is currently the third largest internet market after the U.S. and China and also has one of the youngest online demographics, which makes it no surprise that Instagram is gaining traction within the nation.
According to author and analyst, Nigel Hollis:
“India is a multi-cultural society; even the rural and urban areas have huge cultural and behavioral differences. This plays a large role in both current and future social media use. Another difference is that India is a country with many languages, and therefore text-based social media is not as popular as it might be in the rest of the world. This is why social networking sites like Facebook [and Instagram] are more successful, as they allow users to upload and view images which can be easily shared and understood across the country’s different regions.â€
Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined the surging social media platform Instagram last month. His first photo with this comment earned him 2,400 likes and 384 comments: “Hello World! Great being on Instagram. My first photo…this one from the ASEAN Summit.”
Instagram still has a way to go until it catches the 1.35 billion monthly active users of Facebook, but that won’t likely be a concern since Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion in 2012.
Youtube sits in second place with 1 billion monthly users, followed by Google+ (540 million), then Instagram, followed by Twitter, LinkedIn (187 million), Pinterest (70 million), and Vine (40 million).