Instagram Grows 850% and Tops Twitter in Mobile Users

The Instagram-Facebook Deal finally closed last month as the company was bought out by Facebook for $1 billion in April. The mobile-only and easy-to-use filtered-photo network has also surpassed Twitter in the number of active daily mobile users. In a six-month period from March til August, Instagram grew from 886,000 users to just over 7.3 million daily mobile users according to Computerworld

That’s almost 500,000 more than Twitter, which had 6.86 million active daily mobile users in the same period, an increase of only 24%.

It goes to show that the mobile internet is a very visual place. Users would rather look at pictures or watch videos than read status updates on Twitter. It shows a continued shift away from other mediums like Facebook to show your photos to a new group of social media contacts that is also integrated with Facebook. Users are notified of when their Facebook friends join the popular photo sharing service.

Mobile video should continue to prove its worth for platforms like Instagram that won’t have to include any existing company’s video player. There won’t have to be a Vimeo, YouTube, QuickTime, or Windows Media Player for starters.

Vancouver’s Destiny Media is helping to lead the charge. The company says: Destiny Media develops services that enable content owners to securely display and distribute their audio and video content digitally through the internet.”

The Play MPE system enables record labels to send locked and watermarked content through the Internet. It’s used by over 1,000 record labels and is rolling out globally.

Another technology called Clipstream, Destiny’s streaming media technology, enables a single video file to play on all devices. It comes at a 90% lower bandwidth cost and there is no need for a player.

Videos will “just play” in browsers, mobile and Internet alike with no need for player plug-ins. Firefox recently came out with a mobile browser that thus far represents 1% of the market.