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Instagrammers go turkey-wild with Thanksgiving Day photos

Notice an especially full photo feed on Thanksgiving and the first day of Hanukkah? You're not the only one -- it was the social network's busiest day ever.

Dara Kerr Former senior reporter
Dara Kerr was a senior reporter for CNET covering the on-demand economy and tech culture. She grew up in Colorado, went to school in New York City and can never remember how to pronounce gif.
Dara Kerr
Thanksgiving 2013 was Instagram's busiest day yet. Instagram

Photos of golden-crisp cooked turkeys, dark red cranberry sauce, family football, and the lighting of menorahs crowded Instagram on Thursday. In fact, so many people took to the photo-sharing social network that the company announced it was its busiest day ever.

"We saw record usage as Instagrammers shared a heaping helping of holiday cheer," the company wrote in a blog post on Friday. "Your Thanksgiving and Hanukkah-related photos and videos helped make yesterday our busiest so far -- and for that we give thanks to you."

Thanksgiving this year was historic in that for the first time in 125 years it shared the same date as the first day of Hanukkah -- something that won't happen again for tens of thousands of years. So, not only did people post photos of deep-fried turkey, turducken, and pumpkin pie, they also added images of fried latkes, wooden dreidels, and family time.

In the three years since it launched, Instagram has grown tremendously. The social network says it now has 150 million active users worldwide. Earlier this month, the service -- which sold to Facebook for $1 billion last year -- announced that it was starting to run advertisements in an effort to monetize its business.

While Instagram noted that Thanksgiving this year was its "busiest" day ever, the company didn't provide specific details on the numbers of users and photos uploaded.