<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"The incredibly popular photo sharing service Instagram has hit 80M users, marking a 30M user increase since its acquisition by Facebook.\r\n\r\nThe announcement was made on the Instagram Blog, where the team announced the new numbers and also said that users have shared almost 4 billion photos.\r\n\r\nJust after it was acquired, Facebook announced that Instagram had some 50M users. Shortly before it was acquired, it launched an Android app and said it had some 30M users, and marked The service surpassed 25M users in March of this year.\r\nThis is how Instagram has grown since October of 2010, according to Quora:\r\n\r\nOct 13 2010: 100,000\r\nOct 20 2010: 200,000\r\nOct 28 2010: 300,000\r\nDec 21 2010: 1 million\r\nFeb 01 2011: 1.75 million\r\nFeb 15 2011: 2 million\r\nMay 03 2011: 3.6 million\r\nMay 26 2011: 4.4 million\r\nOct 31 2011: 12 million\r\nDec 5 2011:\u00A014 million\r\nJan 24 2012: 15 million\r\nMar 11 2012: 27 million\r\nMay 1 2012:\u00A050 million\r\nAnd now, July 26, 2012: 80 million. Although some expressed their doubts about the future success of the service after Facebook's\u00A0acquisition, we weren't so pessimistic. I made the case that Facebook could have freed up Instagram to continue being what it wanted to be:\r\n\r\nI think it\u2019s a win for everyone. Now Instagram doesn\u2019t have to shoehorn a monetization model it would hate \u2014and you would hate \u2014 into its service in order to survive. The users get a better experience. Facebook gets more data.\u00A0Users that are quitting Instagram because the service may be \u2018ruined\u2019 are barking up the wrong tree. Facebook sees the value in the network as it is, a photo creation machine with a lot of user love.\r\nDrew Olanoff also thought Facebook got a good deal with the Instagram purchase, saying that it was the YouTube of photos:\r\n\r\nIn November 2006, Google bought the video sharing powerhouse YouTube for an \u201Castronomical\u201D $1.65 billion. The first video was uploaded to YouTube on April 23rd, 2005. It quickly became the default site on the web to upload video clips of just about anything; dogs, cats, babies, and yes, some copyrighted stuff. You couldn\u2019t discuss video on the web without mentioning YouTube. Does this story sound familiar at all? It sounds like\u00A0what just happened with Instagram and Facebook, of course.\r\nRegardless of the opinion of pundits, though, Instagram continues to grow at a massive rate. And it shows no signs of stopping now.\r\n\r\nFacebook is set to release its first financial report as a public company later today. I'm sure this announcement was pure coincidence."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/07/26/instagram-hits-80-million-users-a-30m-increase-since-acquisition/>