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Instagram Hits One Billion Users Worldwide And Launches New IGTV

Instagram Hits One Billion Users Worldwide And Launches New IGTV

Instagram has topped on billion users - a rate of 200m new IGers per year. Now, it's launching IGTV to compete with YouTube and Snapchat

Mike Wood

Mike Wood

Every LAD and their dog is on Instagram, right? Actually, I'd like to see a tracker of just how many dogs there are on Insta, given the tendency towards creating pet-themed content.

It turns out that while, no, everyone is not on Insta, you will find a huge proportion of the world on the social media platform. They must be, as Instagram just announced that it has reached one billion users.

It's pretty good going for a platform that only launched in 2010. In fact, if you've got a minute, its growth is staggering. The photo and video-sharing platform has added 200 million users since September of last year, which in itself was a growth of 200m users on the same time in 2016.

When a platform grows and grows at such a rate, then the next step is always vital. Instagram has decided on that already - it has launched IGTV, aka Instagram TV, a video platform that is set to rival YouTube and Vimeo.

"IGTV is a new app and space within Instagram where people can watch long-form (up to an hour), vertical video from their favourite Instagram creators and celebs, allowing them to connect more meaningfully. IGTV is different from the typical mobile video experience," said Insta in a press release.

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It's mobile-first, so IGTV is built for how you naturally use and hold your phone. Videos are full screen and vertical. It looks great.

It's also simple to use. It starts playing as soon as you open the app, so you don't have to search to get started. It will also be built on quality content, with IGTV using the Instagram network as its foundations and creators are the channels. That means you can watch people you already follow on Instagram (LADbible, for example) and discover others.

So your favourite IGers will be given more time and space to do their thing, creating great content for users to enjoy.

This move places Instagram firmly in competition with YouTube and Snapchat for video content, but with the advantage of having a solid base of content creators and influencers to begin with.

It'll be interesting to see how it turns out - but given that the parent platform is growing by the size of one Brazil every year, it wouldn't be a clever idea to back against it.

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Topics: Instagram, Technology