Instagram now has more than a half a billion users

IMAGE: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE

BY KARISSA BELL1 HOUR AGO

Instagram has reached a new milestone. 

The photo sharing app now counts more than 500 million monthly active users, up from 400 million in September, Instagram announced Tuesday.

Of those, more than 300 million people use the app every day, according to a statement from the company. 

International growth also remains strong, with more than 80% of users now living outside of the United States (up from 75% in September.)

The new stats come at a time when users are fired up over changes the company has made to its app, particularly its feed, which shifted to an algorithmic-based model. But if Instagram's recent change to an algorithmic-based feed has had any impact on its growth and engagement, it's difficult to discern from the latest numbers the company has shared. The app now sees more than 95 million new posts and more than 4 billion likes each day. 

Though Instagram is still relatively small compared with Facebook and WhatsApp — each of which count well over a billion active users — the latest growth suggests the photo app is well on its way to the billion user club.