Instagram: Stories Is A Year Old with 250m Users While Users Under 25 Spend About 32 Mins In App Daily

It’s been one year since Instagram launched Stories and to celebrate it, they released some numbers to tell us just how much people love the app. Users under the age of 25 now spend at least 32 minutes in the app every day while those older than 25 now spend about 24 minutes each day in the app. This comes as they say there are now over 500 million accounts with 250 million of them using the app daily.

The numbers represent a healthy growth in the way people now use the Facebook owned photo service. Back in 2014, Instagram users averaged 21 minutes daily but it looks like with the launch of services like the Snapchat inspired Stories and other features, more users now prefer to spend time in the app. Back in April this year, Instagram reported that 200 million people were using Stories as a way of connecting with other users but that number has increased by 50 million today.

On the business side, they started taking the shine away from Snapchat. They added that over the last month, over 50 percent of businesses created a Story and to celebrate the success those businesses have attained using Stories, they said one in five organic stories from businesses gets a direct message.

While we all agree that Instagram and the Facebook clan have directly copied Snapchat over the years, they have tried to make it better too. Instagram made it to use hashtags to search for other users and lets not forget Boomerang (Instagram’s looping videos).

On the abuse side which is threatening to take over social media, we reported that Instagram is using its parent company’s DeepText tool to combat spam and abusive comments. They have also made it easier for users to block out offensive comments in other ways while also announcing that it would now be blurring out sensitive content.