Instagram surpasses 1 billion app installs, but teens prefer Snapchat
Instagram has now reached 1 billion app downloads on the Google Play Store, however Snapchat, which has 150 million active daily users, is more popular among teenagers, according to a Piper Jaffray report. Instagram’s monthly user numbers have more than doubled in the past two years, with its most recent 100 million active users arriving faster than the previous 100 million.

Making its parent proud, Instagram has surpassed 1 billion app installs on the Google Play Store.

The milestone -- first noticed by Android Police -- makes Instagram the fourth Facebook-owned app to reach a billion Android app installs, following WhatsApp, Messenger and Facebook’s flagship app.

While still growing at a respectable clip, Instagram is clearly losing ground to Snapchat. Indeed, the social sensation recently surpassed Instagram as the top social destination among teens, according to findings from Piper Jaffray.

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“Social networks are chasing the same eyeballs, and they're all borrowing/revamping capabilities to provide similar experiences for existing users while trying to capitalize on relevance to attract new users,” Erna Alfred Liousas, an analyst with Forrester Research, told Mobile Marketing Daily.

Yet while “Instagram will certainly learn quite a bit with their new feature … Snapchat users are on Snapchat for the totality of their experience, not just one component of it,” Liousas added.

It came as little surprise, then, when Instagram recently debuted Stories -- a simple way for users to share moments of their day in slide-show form, which bears a striking resemblance to Snapchat’s most popular feature.

Like Snapchat Stories, Instagram’s Stories feature encourages users to type text and draw on their picture before they are shared.

Despite the rise of Snapchat, Instagram continues to post impressive user figures. The Facebook unit’s monthly user base more than doubled over the past two years, and it added its last 100 million active users faster than the previous 100 million.

On average, Instagram now sees about 95 million photos and videos shared per day, and about 4.2 billion "likes" per day.

But Snapchat’s success shows no signs of slowing. As of June, it reportedly boasted 150 million daily active users.