Judging by the massive spike in selfies (and response selfies) and lunch shots in our Instagram feeds following the debut of their new video functionality, it certainly seemed like a successful launch.
Now, thanks to some stats that the team just shared with us, we know exactly how well it did right out of the gate.
In the first 24 hours after the switch was flipped, Instagram saw 5 million videos uploaded. That’s a jaw-droppingly huge number for any day one feature, but remember: Instagram does have 130 million users. Even if we assume that each of the 5 million videos came from a unique user (an absolutely wild assumption, of course), that works out to around 3.8% of Instagram’s userbase giving the new feature a spin.
In the first 8 hours alone, Instagram saw roughly a year’s worth of content uploaded.
Curiously, their biggest spike in traffic didn’t come right after launch — instead, it was a few hours later, when the Miami Heat won Game 7 of the NBA Finals. At that point, they were seeing almost 40 hours of videos uploaded per minute.
For comparison’s sake, Vine’s 13 million users reportedly upload a collective 1 million videos per day.