Instagram saw 10% growth after Ts&Cs debacle

 

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By Nicole Kobie

Posted on 18 Jan 2013 at 11:20

Instagram has rebuffed claims it shed users after last month's terms and conditions controversy, saying the site has grown by 10%.

Last month, Instagram angered users by changing its terms, with many interpreting the new wording to mean the Facebook-owned photo service was planning on selling users' images. Faced with angry users, Instagram quickly rolled back the changes.

Weeks later, stats from AppData suggested the terms and conditions fiasco had led to as many as a quarter daily users abandoning the site, falling from 16.4m users a day before the change to 12.4m ten days later.

However, Instagram's data suggests that fall may have been an anomaly. The site said it now has 90m monthly users - while that doesn't compare directly to the AppData daily user figures, Instagram said it had posted 10% growth from December to January.

That suggests the terms debate didn't hurt the Facebook-owned photo service, and may even have been good publicity for Instagram - a point made by PC Pro editor Barry Collins at the time.

"Instagram continues to see very strong growth around the world,” Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom said to Wall Street Journal blog AllThingsD. "With many of the product and internationalisation improvements we've made, we've been excited to see these efforts resonate with users globally."