Instagram announced a major milestone in the young social networks history, with 300 million active users on their app at any given moment. That’s more than Twitter which boasts about 284 Million active users, that’s our assumption given the response of company co-founder Evan Williams when Fortune’s Erin Griffith asked about the difference.
“If you think about the impact Twitter has on the world versus Instagram, it’s pretty significant. It’s at least apples to oranges,” he said.
“Twitter is what we wanted it to be. It’s this realtime information network where everything in the world that happens on Twitter, important stuff breaks on Twitter and world leaders have conversations on Twitter.
“If that’s happening, I frankly don’t give a s**t if Instagram has more people looking at pretty pictures.”
When it was pointed out that stock markets care about financial figures and user numbers, Mr Williams retorted: “Twitter makes a hell of a lot more money than Instagram, if that’s what Wall Street cares about.”
Mr Williams also questioned what an active monthly user is and said the term needs to be defined better to get a true reflection of how well technology
One thing that Twitter isn’t considering is how fast Instagram is for getting widespread news, from people tagging personal accounts to updates from musicians, giveaways, and things of that nature. Instagram is definitely striving to become that go to social network for news, updates, during the Ferguson riots, they were ground level for getting out newsworthy videos letting people know what was happening, on an up-to-the-minute basis.
Instagram cofounder Mike Krieger spoke on the evolution of Instagram:
“We’ll keep developing the real-time current events angle,” he says. The company has built up a data team over the past year. A couple of weeks ago, Instagram started suggesting people that a user might want to follow. It’s a start, and it will certainly make Instagram even more alluring to the people who now turn to Twitter for news.
We’ll have to wait and see, do you think Twitter is gaining on Instagram or not? Leave your thoughts below.
