Instagram, the popular photo-sharing app for smartphones that is owned by Facebook, published its first-ever disclosure of monthly active users on its press website Thursday, revealing it has 90 million, as All Things D reported. That’s less than the 100 million total registered users Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Instagram had as of September 2012, but it is remarkably close to that number, revealing that most of the total registered users are quite active on a month-to-month basis (they don’t just create accounts and leave them idle).
The new numbers also don’t quite dispute recent prior reports based on third-party analytics that Instagram was losing daily active users following a controversial privacy policy and terms-of-service update announced in December 2012, but Instagram’s founder and CEO Kevin Systrom indirectly rebutted those reports, telling All Things D its report Thursday:
“Instagram continues to see very strong growth around the world,” Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom told AllThingsD. “With many of the product and internationalization improvements we’ve made, we’ve been excited to see these efforts resonate with users globally.”
Instagram previously directly rebuffed a report by analysis firm AppData, which only tallies users logged into Instagram through their Facebook accounts, that Instagram was losing daily active users, saying: “We continue to see strong and steady growth in both registered and active users of Instagram.”
