After the brutal beat down that Instagram received when it changed it's Terms of Service, some questioned if the company would be able to survive the deep decline of users that were jumping ship. A few weeks later and Instagram is finally responding to some of these accusations releasing their user numbers and surprisingly they are actually witnessing growth rather than decline. The company released numbers that shows at last count over 90 million users are actively using the service posting over 40 million photos a day.
“Instagram continues to see very strong growth around the world,” Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom told AllThingsD. “With many of the product and internationalization improvements we’ve made, we’ve been excited to see these efforts resonate with users globally.”
The numbers released reflect a 10% increase from December to January, however no specifics on the breakdown of Android vs iOS users or any other specifics. Since it's privacy scandal in December Instagram has changed up it's TOS yet again and vows not to use photos for advertising. At the time of controversy some reports had suggested that as many as 25% of it's users were deleting their account. But now that we got data direct from the horses mouth it appears that people actually stuck around and in fact 90-million are still actively using the service.
[Via Engadget]
I'm still using it! Tried flickr, as all my Instagram friends jumped ship to it, for a minute but I really just dislike so many things about flickr, that I ended up sticking with Instagram. In fact, since the T.O.S. fiasco, I feel like I actually have a more tight knit group of people that are dedicated to posting, collaborating, and making it a strong community than before.
You and 89,999,999 others!
Flickr and Instagram are not similar services at all, and as a photographer I would never use instagram to store and share my pictures as I do with flickr.
Glad you are sticking with it Merek! I would have missed following your work!
Of course, been using it for about 2 years now @the_gris and its not just a stupid filter effects app. Its the whole ecosystem and user friendly UI that I find attractive about it. Not to mention the fast take, edit and post to multiple social networks. Combined with multiple other apps to create a little edgier and more custom shots outside of the usual filters I have been using primarily VSCO, Camera Awesome, Blender, Frametastic, Phonto and Snapseed. It really has become a great little tool to help broaden my photography outside of the DSLR and get me thinking constantly because well I always have my phone on me.
Yes I'll keep using it further. I'm on there since April 2012 @mkorbit. It's a great app, very intuitive ui and a friendly community. Ok spam is a problem but I think it got better. Love to see what others are photographing with smartphones (if it's not their feet, food or pets).
I've quit since the privacy gates, and, to connect with the article, i think that a lot of "pro" did the same, the community is still enlarging, but for more amateurs i guess ... all the people who don't really care about the destination of their private pictures because they don't consider they are valuable ( and for most of the, they are right to think so :) )
I received an email today from Instagram. I forgot I had an account (that's how much I used it). Used that as an opportunity to delete it. It's clear where they want to go with it and I don't want to be a part of it. I might as well delete it now so I can be appart of that statistic. Glad to see Flickr is getting some work done too. It's nice to have my pictures of value in one place. I don't really mind putting snapshots on facebook to share with friends though.
I'm into street photography. I really don't if the "other party" use my
photos commercially. I just want to know can the person(s) in my
photo(s) can SUE me or the "other party" or both ?
When it first started it was brilliant it was more about the photography. Now every man and his dog uses it and I have to admit, i started to dislike it with the likes of some celebrities using it. When privacy gate came out, I quickly jumped overboard and exported my pictures, deleted my account. Now I have a really awesome Windows 8 phone and I'm extremely grateful the app is not available on that platform. They have many other great apps instead.