Instagram added 100 million users last quarter

Both Twitter and Instagram have released figures that show continued user growth for both major social media platforms.

Twitter announced active users were up 8% year-over-year to 328 million in the first quarter, which was a higher rate of 4% in the previous quarter.

Twitter’s COO and CFO Anthony Noto attributed most of the user growth to Donald Trump taking over the U.S. presidency.

But changes introduced by Twitter as personalization of users’ timelines and notifications were also instrumental. Its move into live video covering sports, business and politics is expected to boost user numbers, especially as it plans to make it a 24/7 service.

Twitter’s revenue in the first quarter, ending March 30, beat market expectations. Revenue was down 8% from US $595 million to $548 million, but beat market expectations of $512 million.

The 140-character messaging service’s annual growth is 36%. But the revenue drop was attributed to the US ad business shrinking 13% from last year, although global revenue was up 2%.

A survey of 1500 U.S. companies said they planned to move their ad spend from Twitter to Facebook and Snap.

Snapchat has 375 million active users.

Instagram announced this week it has hit 700 million active users. Of particular interest is that 100 million of these were in the last three months, signifying a growth of 16.7% in a single quarter for the seven-year-old company, which is owned by Facebook.

Most of the 700 million are from outside the United States as the company has made it easier for more global territories to connect. Brazil is its second biggest user base, with 45 million users alone.

The increasingly faster rate of growth has analysts predicting that it will total 1 billion shortly, bringing it closer to Facebook’s 1.8 billion.

In February 2017, Instagram had about 400 million daily active users, compared to Snapchat’s daily 161 million.

This month Instagram revealed 200 million were using their Snapchat-aping Stories feature, which it introduced eight months ago.