Reality check time: Instagram A-OK with 90M monthly active users
Instagram reports monthly active users for the first time and shows that it's doing just fine after December privacy scandal.
With one little update, Instagram is out to quiet critics of its continued growth following last month's privacy policy debacle.
The photo-sharing app has 90 million monthly active users, according to its just-updated press page, as first spotted by All Things D. This is the first time the Facebook-owned property has reported active users. Previously, Instagram said that it had 100 million registered users.
The number confirms what CNET has suspected for weeks: Instagram has fully recovered from its December privacy scandal. The photo app maker had changed its terms of service with language that suggested that it would sell user photos. An intense backlash immediately ensued as celebrities and other members threatened to delete their accounts.
The offending language was eventually removed, but some reports suggested that as much as 25 percent of the app's daily users had jumped ship. A gander at the company's Web traffic told a completely different story. Now we know from the horse's mouth that Instagram seems pretty much unscathed. So much for a Flickr comeback, eh?
Instagram's refreshed press center now includes a few other interesting tidbits: Instagram sees 40 million photos per day, 8,500 likes per second, and 1,000 comments per second. Separately, technical co-founder Mike Krieger revealed in a developer blog post that Instagram handles more than 10,000 likes per second at peak times.