Instagram Captures 100,000 Mobile Photo Addicts In Less Than A Week

Instagram has had a good week. Seven days ago, after months of testing, they released their first app into Apple’s App Store. Within a few days, my feeds on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook were inundated with Instagram images. I’m friends with a lot of early-adopter types, so I wondered if it just seemed like the app was everywhere. But it turns out it’s not just my friends using it, it’s their friends and their friend and their friends… Last night, after just six days, the service crossed 100,000 users.

Now, 100,000 may not seem that impressive in a world where Facebook has 500 million users, but again, that’s after just one week in existence and only being available on the iPhone. You can’t even sign up on their website yet, you need to get the app to be a user. As a point of comparison, it took new media darling Foursquare seven months to get 60,000 users.

We’re getting one picture taken every two seconds from places all over the world,” co-founder Kevin Systrom tells us. I asked him about usage outside the tech bubble and he noted that only about 12 percent of their photos are coming from areas around tech hubs like San Francisco and New York City. He also says that activity in both Europe and Asia has been strong and notes that the highest usage areas aside from the U.S. are Hong Kong, Spain, Germany, and Australia.

So what’s next for Instagram? Right now they’re obviously focused on scaling, but Systrom does say that other camera filters are in the works. They recognize this can certainly be one area of potential revenue if they use the iPhone’s in-app purchasing to sell premium filters or new features, but again, they’re mainly focused on growing right now.

You can find Instagram in the App Store here. It’s a free download.