Instagram Surpasses Twitter in Monthly Active Users for the First Time
Photo Credit: Contributing photographer's mundane shot of autumn leaves on a rainy day in New Jersey. Instagram / John Kernick
Skift Take
Brands that are planning their 2015 marketing budgets should consider how they will allocate resources to producing original photographs or leveraging user-generated content -- or both -- on Instagram.
Instagram, the four-year-old mobile-first photo- and video-sharing platform, just hit a milestone for its community.
Twitter currently has 284 million Monthly Active Users (MAUs) while Instagram reported that it has over 300 million MAUs. Although Instagram's community is still smaller than its parent company, Facebook, and its video competitor, YouTube, it's growing the fastest in 2014. Currently, Facebook has 1.35 billion MAUs and YouTube is at 1 billion Monthly Unique Visitors. To put it into perspective, Facebook is ten years old, YouTube is nine years old, and Twitter is eight.
Besides having the highest user growth rate among these three platforms, Instagram also has the most engaged community. According to Forrester, 4.21% of
