There's no stopping Instagram's winning streak.
On Friday, web developer Rakshith Krishnappa noticed that in the 10 days since CEO Kevin Systrom announced the service had hit the 30 million user milestone, Instagram had added another 10 million users to its list.
"I have been keeping track since last year when I started developing gramfeed.com," Krishnappa, a developer who works on gramfeed, a web interface for the popular mobile app, told Wired. "It was at 30,000,000 when Kenvin Systrom confirmed 30 million users, now it is at 40,000,000."
No more than two weeks ago, Instagram unveiled the Android version of the popular photo-sharing app for the first time, racking up 5 million downloads in less than a week. Shortly afterward, Facebook decided to buy the 13-man outfit for a cool $1 billion. That got everyone's attention, and the app's popularity has only surged since.
On the one hand, the explosion in growth makes sense. Instagram is currently the most popular free app for iOS, and has grown consistently over the past two years despite unavailability on Android. When the Android floodgates finally opened, new users came piling in. But Facebook's acquisition of the start-up brought Instagram's visibility to national attention, with even more attention paid as the social giant's IPO looms. Thousands of non-techies were exposed to the app for the first time.
The big question today is, Will the acquisition change the app that millions know and love for the better, or for worse?
[via TechCrunch]
