Facebook-owned photo sharing app Instagram now has more than 600 million monthly active users. Instagram made the announcement of the new milestone on its blog Wednesday, noting that it grew the number of monthly actives by 100 million in the past 6 months.
The new milestone comes as Instagram is actively looking to transform to an all-out social media sharing platform that has taken quite a few cues from successful competitors. In August, Instagram launched Stories, a format that closely resembles Snapchat’s own stories, allowing users to share ephemeral media with their followers.
A month ago, Instagram doubled down on this kind of sharing by giving its users the ability to privately share photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours. In addition, Instagram also rolled out live video streaming with an integration that closely resembles Twitter’s Periscope.
Instagram’s head of product Kevin Weil has been quite open about the fact that these features aren’t exactly original to the service. “Sometimes good ideas are good ideas,” he told Variety last month when quizzed about the fact that Instagram’s private photo sharing looks a lot like Snapchat’s. “It’s a feature that makes sense to people.”
Popular on Variety
And copying is working for Instagram, one might add. Not only has the overall number of users been growing, the new features are also getting significant traction: More than 100 million people are using Instagram Stories every day, according to data released by the service in November.
