Image sharing and social networking site, Instagram, now has 25 million businesses using its platform, up from 15 million in July, the company said in a blog post today. A majority of these are small businesses.
"As 800 million people use Instagram each month to discover and follow their passions, more and more people are using it to connect with businesses they love," the company said in the post. "In fact, over 80 per cent of accounts on Instagram follow a business, while 200 million Instagrammers actively visit the profile of a business every day. As a result, the Instagram community is helping spur small business growth in big ways," the post further said.
The company also stated that two-thirds of the profile visits to businesses on its platform come from people who aren't following that business. "With one in three small businesses on Instagram saying they built their business on Instagram, it has become a destination where businesses are not only discovered, but where business is done."
The latest numbers give an idea of the rapid growth of the Facebook-owned company since the introduction of business profiles on its platform in May last year. The platform had only 100 million monthly active users in 2013, which has grown to 800 million today.
Earlier in November, Facebook, too, had announced the growing community of businesses on its platform. Facebook claims that more than 1.2 billion people from around the world on its platform are connected to a small business in another country, out of which over 250 million people are connected to a business in India. It also said that 42 per cent of people on Facebook in India are connected to at least one SMB (small and medium business) in a foreign country, and that 65 per cent of people on Facebook in India are connected to at least one SMB in India.