Instagram’s User Count Now At 40 Million, 10 Million New Users In 10 Days | Hacker News Reader

Instagram’s User Count Now At 40 Million, 10 Million New Users In 10 Days

techcrunch.com

35 pointskevinwdavid13 comments

OK, I've been gawking the cool filtered photos my friends were posting on FB, so I installed it on my Droid X as soon as I saw the app became available for Android. The UI is cool but I don't know what to do. There are a few filters but none is giving me those cool effects. I am totally underwhelmed by the unengaging app; maybe my expectations were too high due to all the hype.

It seems I am in the very very rare minority among the installers, though.

So the filters aren't what really make it special, they just make it easier to take a cool photo on an otherwise limited camera. Most people are actually hooked once they get a few likes, from friends (or randoms if you hashtag your photos).

> The vast majority of the new users likely first heard about Instagram from the news of the Facebook acquisition

Really? You mean all those people had never seen an Instagram photo cross their FB or Twitter stream before that? Really?

I have a hard time believing that most of them started joining Instagram once Facebook bought it. I'd say at least 80-90% of them came from Android. They were signing up at a rate of 1 million per day before Facebook bought them, and then it continued.

Maybe, but this could also simply be a statement that Instagram has now learned FB's user-counting methodology.

I'm sure the publicity helped. The news was on front page of cnn, fortune, usatoday, etc.

I take it that all the HN-ers deleting the app after the purchase hasn't quite made a dent in their user count. ;)

Just like all the iOS whiners that threatened to bail when the app hit Android. :)

They probably haven't subtracted us from the count.

For many startupps the companies take off after a level of media acceptance. How often was Twitter mentioned with celebrities in the news. Facebook made a great purchase. It is kind of how Coca Cola bought Vitamin Water. People thought Coca Cola paid a great amount but they were able to put their sales channels and marketing muscle behind a brand that was already growing and becoming a threat. If your startup becomes a threat to Google, Microsoft, Apple or Facebook please prepare to be very rich. It helps if you are able to have the media behind your company. I think Facebook will prove this was a great buy and it will start many sales of social networks. I am shocked RenRen has not been bought. They are the largest Chinese social network and if I had the money today I would buy or partner with them. China is a big market and I am shocked the low valuatio on the stock symbol Renn. I would think the hedge funders would be clamoring for all of the chinese internet companies since their growth is going to be huge and the market is untapped in terms of potential. Will Listen is going to partner with other countries to spread our push internationally. http://www.willlisten.com

Would be interesting to see high scalability post for this month from them.

Avg Joe: "Wow! They bought an iphone app for a BILLION DOLLARS? Must be an AMAZING app"

should be <rushes to android market>

Strictly speaking, the average American smartphone-owning Joe is an Android user since Android has 50% of the American smartphone market. iPhone has 30%.

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