Instagram | Media Culpa

Instagram now has 9 million users

The popular photo app Instagram is growing rapidly. As I blogged this weekend, it now hosts more than 200 million photos and it continues to grow. Instagram has also just passed another milstone since it now has more than 9 million members (today, even more than 9.1 million). In June it had 5 million members, as reported by TechCrunch, which means that it has added an additional 4 million in less than three months.

Account number 9 million is “taylorswift13” and details about it can be found on Statigram or Inkstagram. The first account on Instagram which is not private is number 3, and it belongs to its CEO and co-founder Kevin Systrom (“kevin”). His account can be found here and here.

If you want to follow me, I’m “kullin” on Instagram, details here.

Did Instagram just pass 200 million photos?

So, here’s an idea. In the beginning of August, TechCrunch and others reported that Instagram had reached 150 million hosted photos. They actually even posted the 150 millionth photo that was taken by the user “janefot”. There is no way from the URL of each photo to determine what number it has. But one intersting thing happens when you check each URL using the site Inkstagram.

The 150 millionth photo actually has the following unique web address on Inkstagram: http://inkstagram.com/#/photos/150000003 (Update: Inkstagram is now ink361.com so the correct URL is now http://ink361.com/#/photos/150000003 ) Sounds like that number would be pretty accurate to the confirmed numbers by Instagram, right?

So when I look at my recently uploaded photos, I see that we today have passed 200 million photos, if these numbers are correct.

That would also mean that the 200 millionth photo is the one below, by user “tomvandenbogaerde”. According to the Inkstagram site, it was uploaded today, three hours ago.

http://inkstagram.com/#/photos/200000000 (new URL: http://ink361.com/#/photos/200000000 )

What do you think? Can this be true?

Update: A fact that would support my theory above is that the photo with the serial number #2 on Inkstagram, is this one by Instagram founder Kevin Systrom, who in a comment confirms that this is the first photo ever on Instagram: http://inkstagram.com/#/photos/2. (new URL: http://ink361.com/#/photos/2 ) Number 1 seems to be missing, but still, it seems that Inkstagram have been able to track all photos and number them in sequence as they were published.

And as is mentioned in the comments below, it may be that we should count photo number 200,000,003 as the 200 millionth. That photo however seems to be private, or at least we are not able to view it: http://inkstagram.com/#/photos/200000003

Steady growth for Flickr as it reaches 6 billion photos

As you may know, I have been keeping an eye on the growth of the popular image hosting site/community Flickr. It turns out that in spite of new cool photo apps like Instragram and others quickly adding new fans, Flickr continues to grow with about one billion new photos per year, or to be more precise, it takes about 11 months to add another billion.

The 6 billionth photo was uploaded to the site on Aug 1, 2011 so Flickr seems to be growing at the exact same pace as it has done the last three years (see below). Photo number 5 billion was uploaded on Sept 18, 2010.

The 6 billionth photo can be was shot by Flickr user eon60 and can be viewed here.

Previous milestones for Flickr:

22 Oct 04: 1,000,000
20 Apr 05: 10,000,000
15 Feb 06: 100,000,000
22 Sep 06: 250,000,000
15 May 07: 500,000,000
19 Jul 07: 850,000,000
06 Oct 07: 1,500,000,000
13 Nov 07: 2,000,000,000
17 May 08: 2,500,000,000
03 Nov 08: 3,000,000,000
04 May 09: 3,500,000,000
11 Oct 09: 4,000,000,000
18 Sept 10: 5,000,000,000
1 Aug 11: 6,000,000,000