Amid War With Snapchat, Instagram Hits 600 Million Users

There's been a lot of talk about Snapchat and the threat it poses to Instagram, but Instagram's latest user numbers show that it's still going strong. Instagram, which is a Facebook subsidiary, announced today that it has 600 million users. That's an impressive number, and quite a few more than Snapchat can boast.

However, total users sometimes isn't the best gauge of success. Instead, we'd want to look at how quickly new users are joining, and in Instagram's case, that metric is looking healthy as well. Instagram says that 100 million new users have joined in the past six months, so it looks like it's managed to avoid plateauing user numbers for now.

Back in June, we heard that Snapchat has 150 million monthly active users, so Instagram has a decent lead on it. Facebook and Instagram are looking to keep it that way, recently launching a new feature called Instagram Stories. Upon launch, most of us were immediately hit with a feeling of deja vu, as the feature was nearly a carbon copy of Snapchat's similarly named component.

More recently, Instagram flipped the switch on live videos. Taking a page out of its parent company's book, Instagram live videos allow users to livestream from their phones, giving followers the ability to tune in and watch along. Unlike Facebook live videos, however, Instagram's aren't saved after the stream has completed.

We'll see if Instagram can keep up this growth as we move into 2017. Snapchat's increasing popularity may be able to slow Instagram's growth a bit, but 600 million users is nothing to stick your nose up at. Adding 100 million users in six months is quite impressive as well, but if it can accelerate from here, Instagram will be in a very good place.

SOURCE: Instagram