Instagram Says Half Of All Instagrammers — 75M+ — Use the App Daily

At a press event today in New York City, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom announced that the photo- and video-sharing app is used by half of its users use the app every day.

Back in September, the company told the Wall Street Journal it had more than 150 million monthly active users (a gain of 128 million from Instagram’s user base at the time of its acquisition by Facebook a year earlier). Assuming that number is still accurate, that means more than 75 million Instagrammers use the app every day.

That’s pretty impressive, but Facebook says it saw 727 million daily active users in September.

During his presentation, Systrom also talked about the growth of general photo-sharing. He said it’s driven by three main factors — the transition to digital, the fact that we carry our cameras (i.e., our smartphones) in our pockets, and the ability to share photos on social networks. He noted that those photos run the gamut from important political moments to photos of brunch — but even a brunch pic, he said, is not just brunch, because it serves as “a visual status message” and a location check in.

Of course, all this discussion was just the lead up to a product announcement — Instagram Direct, which offers private photo-sharing and messaging.