National Geographic is the first brand to get to 100m followers on Instagram

"National Geographic ventured into uncharted territory last week, this time on Instagram, where it became the first brand to top 100 million followers. But the publisher’s success is more than organic. Its revenue from social advertising was up 80 percent in 2018 compared with the previous year."
Source:  AdWeek, 19th February 2019

Instagram has over a billion monthly active users

Source:  Techcrunch, 21st June 2018

Instagram stories has 250m daily active users

"The company reported Tuesday that Stories, the feature that lets users share videos and posts that disappear after 24 hours, is now used by 250 million people every day. That means Stories added 50 million new users in two months, one month faster than its jump from 150 million to 200 million users.
Instagram is also changing its live video feature so users can now share those live videos to their Stories. Originally, live videos on Instagram disappeared as soon as the broadcast ended, but now they could exist for up to 24 hours."

[...]

"The new milestone means almost 100 million more people use Instagram Stories than use Snapchat, the actual inventor of the Stories format. That’s a bummer for Snapchat, because they clearly invented something that people want to use — Instagram has just scaled it more quickly."

Source:  Recode, 20th June 2017

Apple users take a trillion photos a year

Apple users take a trillion photos a year. Peak for film was around 80bn, in 1999

— Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans) June 5, 2017

Source:  Stat announced at Apple's WWDC, June 2017

A person with a million Instagram followers can get £3,000 per post

"“It’s the Kardashians who have trail-blazed, really. Everything they do is monetised,” Nicholls says, referring to the “royal family” of the reality television/social media kingdom. The result is a steady and largely effortless stream of cash for those with enough online “disciples”, as he calls them. A person with a million Instagram followers can get £3,000 per post, he explains, and another £2,000 to wear an outfit to an event. “Very quickly you’ve earned £5,000 just by going out,” he says.
Make-up bloggers Nic and Sam Chapman at a beauty and fashion festival in New York © Getty
The prices rocket as the number of followers increases. According to Captiv8, a US social media analytics company, payment for posts on Instagram can range from $800 for people with fewer than 250,000 followers up to $150,000 for those with 7m or more. The rates for Snapchat posts are broadly similar, Facebook carries a moderate premium and YouTube is the most expensive of all, with 7m or more followers resulting in an average fee of $300,000. And that is before you count the other branding opportunities available to social media celebrities. The new and old worlds are effectively one and the same, with fame in one spilling into the other."
Source:  FT, 4th May 2017

80% of Snapchat users use the app in restaurants

"Snapchat, the disappearing messaging turned mobile storytelling app, released a new ad product Wednesday that is a quick swipe at Facebook's big offer to advertisers and retailers: online to offline conversions.
That's jargon for Snapchat's pitch to help retailers get more products off their shelves and prove to them that ads on Snap helped create the magic behind those sales.
The feature, released out of beta, is called "Snap to Store." Snap also reported new data, compiled by Greenberg Strategy (commissioned by Snapchat), on what percentages of Snapchatters use the app at particular venues:
80% at a restaurant
66% at a shopping mall
50% at a gym
49% at an airport
Wendy's was one of Snapchat's early beta testers, along with 7-Eleven and Paramount Pictures.
Wendy's created sponsored geofilters in its U.S. stores that promoted the Jalapeño Fresco Chicken Sandwich. According to Snapchat's internal data (that is verified by third-party platforms), the geofilter drove 42,000 visitors to a Wendy’s within seven days of viewing it."

Source:  Mashable, 12th April 2017

Instagram has 1m monthly advertisers

"Instagram has undergone more changes in the last year than during the previous five. We introduced Instagram Stories – a new way for businesses to share everyday moments – and the use of video exploded. We welcomed a new brand identity and the community grew to more than 600 million globally. At the same time, we were building a thriving business. We now have eight million businesses using business profiles, with the greatest adoption coming from the United States, Brazil, Indonesia, Russia and the United Kingdom. We also have more than one million active monthly advertisers. – up from 200,000 this time last year. And in the last month, over 120 million Instagrammers visited a website, received directions, called, emailed or direct-messaged to learn about a business."

Source:  Blog post from Instagram, 22nd March 2017

View counts for Snapchat stories has fallen 15-405 since the launch of Instagram Stories

"Good enough and convenient. That’s proved a winning strategy for Instagram’s clone, according to a dozen analytics providers, social media celebrities, and talent managers who told TechCrunch they’ve seen a decline in Snapchat Stories usage since Instagram Stories launched on August 2nd.
Most reported declines in Snapchat Stories view counts ranging from 15 to 40 percent, and a reduction in how often they or those they monitor post to Snapchat Stories. Meanwhile, our sources report rapidly growing view counts on Instagram Stories, and engagement-to-follower rates one social influencer talent agent called “Insanely f*cking high”.
The success of Instagram Stories, the decline in Snapchat usage we’ve heard from a wide array of sources, and Facebook’s relentless drive to compete with the startup could spell trouble for Snapchat’s IPO on the NYSE market that’s expected in March. Snap Inc declined to comment for this story."
Source:  TechCrunch, 31st January 2017

Instagram has 600m momthly active users

"A lot has changed this year, but the Instagram community and the diversity of expression it provides has remained consistent. And you now have more ways to share than ever before with Instagram Stories, live video and disappearing photos and videos in Direct. Additionally, with updated safety tools that give you more control over comments and other parts of your experience, we’re working to make Instagram safer than ever for connection and self-expression."

Source:  Blog post from Instagram, 15th December 2016
Earlier - 500m MAUs announced in mid-June

Instagram Stories has 100m Daily Active Users

"Instagram Stories is benefitting from the large active user base Instagram itself enjoys, and now has 100 million daily active viewers. That’s two-thirds of the daily active user population for Snapchat, which reported 150 million global active users across its entire platform in late September. Even with a built-in audience to build from, and prime real estate positioning at the very top of Instagram’s user interface, the rapid pace of its adoption is impressive.
The new stat comes from a Buzzfeed report that also reiterated the total of monthly active users across Instagram at a high of 500 million (a number it first released in June), halfway to that coveted 1 billion mark Facebook Messenger passed earlier this year."

Source:  Techcrunch, 6th October 2016

Selena Gomez 'can get paid $550,000 for a social media post'

"Celebrity women are absolutely dominating social media when it comes to personal branding nowadays, and Selena Gomez is the queen bee of digital buzz. According to measurement company D'Marie Analytics, the top six social influencers are either female pop stars like Gomez, Rihanna, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift—or their last name is Jenner, and first name is either Kendall or Kylie.
Gomez currently stands in the No. 1 slot and, per D'Marie, is worth $550,000 per social media post when the messaging appears across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. That's $300,000 more than the analytics company said Kendall Jenner, Gomez, Swift and Cara Delevingne could probably charge last December.
Frank Spadafora, CEO of D'Marie Group, described the methodology behind Gomez's $550,000 figure: "The rate-per-post is her 'ad equivalent' value per post across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. This may be different than how much she is actually getting paid when participating in social media campaigns. That is up to negotiations between her agents and the brands. This valuation is based on D'Marie's algorithm which measures 56 metrics including followers, post frequency, engagement, quality of post, click-thru and potential to create sales conversions from her social content."

Source;  AdWeek, 19th July 2016

Note - Caveat emptor - D'Marie doesn't actually know and is 'estimating' based on goodness knows what

Selena Gomez' 'Coke' picture is the most liked picture on Instagram

when your lyrics are on the bottle 😛

A photo posted by Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) on Jun 25, 2016 at 2:03pm PDT

4.6m likes as at 21st July 2016
Earlier - Kendal Jenner's 'Hair' pic was previously the most liked, I think

Instagram posts per user is falling

"Five times as many people now use Instagram as did in 2013. But despite that strong growth, Instagram has seen a worrisome trend. Between 2013 and 2015, the number of photos shared on average by each Instagram user fell, said two people briefed on the app’s internal data.
And just as its parent Facebook has been trying to reverse a drop in how much people share about their lives on the social network, Instagram has to figure out how to deal with the decline in “sharing” on its service. Otherwise over time people may gradually visit Instagram less and gravitate to rival apps, particularly Snapchat, which in the past year or two has gotten much more buzz than Instagram."

Source:  The Information, 30th June 2016

Instagram has 500m monthly and 300m daily active users

"Instagram passed 500 million users, and growth is accelerating as the photo sharing app clears a hurdle that has stalled competitors.
The most recent 100 million users joined up faster than the previous 100 million, indicating the app owned by Facebook Inc. won't be hindered any time soon by the growth plateau that plagues competitor Twitter Inc. Instagram said daily active users have reached 300 million. That's about double what Snapchat Inc. and Twitter see.
Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 for about $750 million. Since then, the photo network has grown exponentially due to the ease of sharing images—a medium that can cross language barriers and create connections between people even without formal social ties. About 80 percent of Instagram's users come from outside of the U.S.
Instagram was able to rely on the world's largest social network to assist growth, while tapping into Facebook's advertisers to start ramping up its business. In the last year, Instagram started focusing on being a destination for photos and video from events."

Source:  Bloomberg, 21st June 2016

130m visual searches are done each month on Pinterest

130 million "visual" searches using Pinterest's image search tool each month (explained here: https://t.co/h7X1klq1ZB) #EmTechDigital

— Tom Simonite (@tsimonite) May 23, 2016

60% of Instagram's users say they learn about products and services on the app

"60 per cent of Instagram’s 400m monthly active users say they learn about products and services on the app and 75 per cent say they are inspired to act — by searching for a brand’s website, going to a boutique or telling a friend."

Source:  FT, 22nd May 2016

More American teens see Snapchat as their most important social platform than Instagram

Source:  Data from Piper Jaffray, reported by Fortune, 13th April 2016

Instagram users miss 70% of the pictures in their feeds

"You may be surprised to learn that people miss on average 70 percent of their feeds. As Instagram has grown, it’s become harder to keep up with all the photos and videos people share. This means you often don’t see the posts you might care about the most."

Source:  Instagram's blog, 15th March 2016

Instagram has more advertisers than Twitter

"2015 was a big year for Instagram’s advertising business. It rolled out new ad formats that could contain links, expanded the length of its video ads and, most importantly, made it easier for advertisers of any size — and increasingly anywhere — to buy its ads and target those ads.
Seemingly as a result of all those moves, Instagram now claims more than 200,000 active advertisers as of February 2016, the Facebook-owned photo-and-video-sharing service announced on Wednesday. That number may pale in comparison to Instagram’s parent company — Facebook claims more than 2.5 million advertisers — but it trumps Twitter, which had more than 130,000 active advertisers as of the fourth quarter of 2015.
The comparison between Instagram’s and Twitter’s advertiser numbers isn’t an entirely fair one. Twitter has built its advertising business on its own, while Instagram has been able to stand on Facebook’s shoulders. For example, advertisers can buy ads on Instagram using the same self-serve tools from Facebook that they use to buy ads on the larger social network and with the same level of targeting Facebook offers. But still, at the end of the day, more advertisers is more advertisers."

Source;  MarketingLand, 24th February 2016

More photos were shared on social media in 2015 than all the pictures ever taken on film

Instagram COO: 2-3 tillion images shared on social media last year, more than all pictures ever taken on film #DLD16

— Ina Fried (@inafried) January 18, 2016