Instagram Just Hit 700 Million Users, Could Reach 1 Billion in 2017

Instagram isn’t just growing, it’s growing faster than ever. Earlier today, the photo sharing giant announced that it has added 100 million new users in the last four months alone, bringing the total Instagram user count to a whopping 700M.

The past year has been really good to Instagram—as they shamelessly folded Snapchat’s feature set into Instagram Stories, made multiple-photo posts a thing, and started dabbling in live video, their user count has grown at an increasing rate.

According to Recode, it took Instagram 9 months to go from 400M to 500M users, 6 months to go from 500M to 600M, and just 4 months to go from 600M to 700M. If the photo sharing app somehow continues to follow that growth trend, they’ll hit 800M by the end of July, 900M by the end of September, and 1 billion users before the year is out.

“We’ve made it even easier for people across the globe to join the Instagram community, share their experiences and strengthen connections to their friends and passions,” writes Instagram on the company blog. “With new features like stories, live video and disappearing messages in Direct, people now have more ways than ever to express themselves and feel closer to what matters to them.”

Well… that and make Facebook money. In April, Credit Suisse estimated that Instagram would generate over $3 billion in revenue for Facebook in 2016. That’s another growth trend that’s probably not slowing down any time soon.

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