Eight months after Instagram launched Stories for semi-permanent collections of photos and videos, the product has passed 200 million daily users.
That represents a jump of 50 million daily active users since January. Instagram has a total user base of 600 million monthly active users.
When Instagram Stories launched in August 2016, the new feature drew comparisons to Snapchat Stories, which popularized the format in 2013. Both products allow users to create collections of photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours. Instagram executives weren’t shy about discussing the similarities, noting at the time that they considered Stories a new type of format that would appear in many apps in the future. Case in point, Instagram parent company Facebook recently added Stories to the top of its news feed.
Stories have grown quickly for Instagram, and the product has quickly outpaced its rival on Snapchat, which has 158 million daily active users for the entire app. Instagram’s effect on Snapchat, which reports its first earnings as a public company in May, has been noticeable; the disappearing-messaging app started to see a drop-off in user growth last summer.
Instagram announced the milestone for Stories at the same time it revealed some new creative tools for the product including turning selfies into digital stickers.
