Instagram now has over 500 million users

Instagram has come a long way since it was launched six years ago and it recently announced a new milestone of having up over 500 million users.

“Today, we’re excited to announce our community has grown to more than 500 million Instagrammers – more than 300 million of whom use Instagram every single day. Our community also continues to become even more global, with more than 80 percent living outside of the United States,” the company stated on its official blog on Tuesday. In the first three months of Instagram debuting in the App Store, the retro filters that Instagram provided attracted over a million iPhone users, and the number continued to expand when the app became available on the Android platform in 2012. Its success caught Facebook’s attention, which later acquired the company for US$1 billion.

New breakthroughs have recently been added by Instagram, including the ability to share one-minute long video and an update to its iconic logo. Although the latter stirred quite a controversy, it obviously did not stop users from using the app anytime soon.

Instagram, created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger was launched in October 2010 as a free mobile app. The service rapidly gained popularity, with over 100 million active users as of April 2012 and over 300 million as of December 2014. Instagram is distributed through the Apple App Store and Google Play . Support for the app is available for iPhone, iPad, iTouch and Android handsets, while third-party Instagram apps are available for BlackBerrry 10 and Nokia Symbian Devices. The service was acquired by Facebook in April 2012 for approximately US$ 1 billion in cash and stock. In 2013, Instagram grew by 23%, while Facebook, as the parent company, only grew by 3%.