It’s no fairytale we are about to read to our kids at night, yet when you dive further into Instagram’s history, you’d get caught thinking it was one. When was the last time any platform, business or community gained 1 million users in just two months? You’d be hard pressed to find another business to do these numbers.
If it took Instagram 2 months to reach 1 million users, how long do you think it took them to reach 10 million? 2 years, 5 years, 1 year?
Instagram, surpassed 10 million active users in less than 1 year!
So what is the value of 10 million active users on your platform? Well Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook offered $1 billion in 2012 for the ownership of Instagram. And many have praised Mark and Facebook for their bargain buying tactics.
Quickly reaching 30 million users, Facebook brought all of its resources to the table to turn Instagram into the tech giant it is today. In less than a year, Facebook increased Instagram’s user base to over 100 million. And within 3 years (in 2016), Instagram eclipsed the 500 million user mark. As all great tech businesses do, their platform has continued to grow exponentially. In 2018 Instagram surpassed 1 billion users.
So what about the users? Unlike Facebook currently, the majority of Instagram’s user base comes from the US (120 million users), followed by India (88 million users) and Brazil (82 million users). Australians make up 10 million active users, which is higher than Facebook per capita.
Getting on with the Demographics
The demographic data always plays an important role when learning about a business in-depth. The female users from Australia account for approximately 57% of total users, and male users account for 43%. People from the age group of 25-34, make up the majority of the user base in Australia (3.2 million users). As for the rest of the world, female users account for 52% of total users, and the remaining 48% consist of males. The majority of users come from people under the age of 34. To be more precise, people aged 25-34 account for 35% of total users, including males and females. 29% of users are aged 18-24. The platform has the highest popularity among Generation Z, followed by the Millennials. Boomers seem to be less attracted by the platform. People earning AUD$100k or more annually, seem to be the most active group with 42% of total users. Users with a college degree or more also seem to lead the user base.
As for mobile devices, Android and iOS equally share the traffic directed to Instagram (50% each). On average, Instagram users spend 28 minutes on this platform daily. Users seem to engage more with the posts with people’s faces in it, instead of letters and quotations. Instagram has become a very useful platform for businesses over the last couple of years. Businesses including clothing brands, restaurants, gyms, and many others are using Instagram to engage with the customers more efficiently. In recent days, fashion and beauty businesses are seeing the most profit from Instagram. However, Instagram noticed a slight decline last year in its user engagement. Some even believe it will continue to go down in the coming years. The growing popularity of TikTok and Snapchat might be the reason behind it.