Instagram has blown past Twitter — but still faces a fierce battle with Snapchat.
The photo-sharing app owned by Facebook said it now has more than 500 million monthly active users and that 300 million of them log in at least once a day.
Instagram said Tuesday it has doubled in size over the past two years.
With Facebook increasingly encouraging its nearly 1.6 billion monthly users to join Instagram, the photo-sharing app’s most recent 100 million users joined at a faster clip than the previous 100 million.
By comparison, Twitter’s monthly active user ranks have stalled just above the 300 million mark for more than a year – a problem CEO Jack Dorsey has been scrambling to fix.
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Separately this week, Twitter loosened rules for sharing videos on its Vine app, which has fallen out of vogue with the rise of new video-sharing capabilities on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.
Likewise, Periscope, the live-streaming video app bought by Twitter last year, is now under assault by new live-streaming video features on Facebook.
Still, SunTrust analyst Bob Peck noted that most of Instagram’s recent growth has come in overseas markets.
That’s a signal that Snapchat, now valued in the private markets at $18 billion, has been gaining market share in the US.
“The US market is the most mature and robust from an advertising perspective and we estimate Instagram’s [monthly active user] growth is slowing,” Peck wrote.
Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 for about $750 million.
About 80 percent of Instagram’s users come from outside of the US.
Date: June 21, 2016