In retrospect it was inevitable, people typically upload about 20% more photos on Halloween so of course a service that easily allows you to take photos and share them would explode in usership, much like Instagram did on October 30th. Instagram founder Kevin Systrom tells TechCrunch that this weekend’s Halloween Eve activity more than doubled the iPhone app’s previously quoted traffic, at two photo uploads a second.
Systrom gives three reasons behind Instagram’s record Halloween numbers: “1) We got featured by Apple 2) Halloween is an awesome time to share/take pictures and 3) There’s just the natural growth of this thing that doesn’t seem to be slowing.”
Instagram has been growing at 100k users a week since it launched, and that pace is even faster post Halloween. Dan Frommer speculates that that number might even hit the half million mark at the end of this week. Pretty impressive for an app that’s only four weeks old.
Instagram has caught on because it’s easy to use, posts to multiple social sites like Twitter, Facebook and Flickr, allows users to interact with photos and offers creative license in the choice of “antique” iPhone camera filters. And at no time have I felt its presence in my Twitter feed more than I did over the weekend.
Says Systrom, “Back in college people joked that Facebook took off at Stanford because it launched during our finals week when everyone wanted to procrastinate. Maybe Halloween Week was a great week for us in the same way?”
Yes, yes it was.
Image: Chris Messina