Well, that was quick. Just a few days after reports claimed that Instagram's active user base had collapsed, the photo-sharing site is disclosing its own numbers for the first time. According to the company, it has more than 90 million users who check in and use the application at least once a month, and they upload about 40 million photos every day.
The official numbers come after analysts at third parties such as AppStats claimed that Instagram's user base had fallen by 50 percent since December.
"Instagram continues to see very strong growth around the world," Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom said to AllThingsD. "With many of the product and internationalization improvements we've made, we've been excited to see these efforts resonate with users globally."
Notably, many third parties used daily active user metrics (DAU) to back up their claims, whereas Instagram declined to provide DAU statistics. But even though it only released stats on monthly users, the numbers came in well above those indicated in previous reports. AppStats, for example, reported that Instagram's monthly active user base was only 46 million; that's about 50 percent lower than the company's official count. If that's any indication, then it's possible the third party DAU count is significantly lower than reality.
So, what explains the large gap? One reason is probably that third parties only measure users who have their Instagram accounts linked to their Facebook accounts. Most people using the service don't connect their accounts to Facebook, meaning that measurements only recording those statistics aren't offering a very good snapshot of the service's overall base.
On a smaller scale, too, a decrease in usage during December could simply be seasonal, since many schedules are shuffled around for the holidays.
Even then, Instagram said that usage actually increased by 10 percent from December to January.
Reports of the service's collapse followed the release of a new terms of service agreement in December. The company, hoping to monetize the operation, unveiled changes requiring users to grant it royalty-free licenses to all photos they shared. Needless to say, the new terms did not go over well, and after days of fury, Instagram relented and reinstated the previous terms.
