Tech beat

Instagram recorded 7.3 million mobile users in August, while Twitter came in at a mere 6.9 million, according to comScore, a leader in providing measurements in the digital world. After recently acquiring Instagram in April, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg likely isn’t feeling any buyer’s remorse now.

“This is an important milestone for Facebook because it’s the first time we’ve ever acquired a product and company with so many users,” Zuckerberg recently wrote in a blog post in the days after the purchase.

According to an article on mashable.com, Twitter ended up having more total unique visitors in August than Instagram overall, with 29 million compared to 21 million, respectively, though fewer Twitter users returned on a daily basis and visitors spent less time on average viewing content than on Instagram.

Instagram, which began in 2010, allows users to take photos, apply filters to the photo and share with other registered users. Twitter, which began four years prior in 2006, also became a popular mobile application, allowing users to tweet 140-character posts to their account.

Each Instagram mobile user spends an average of 257 minutes on the app, which calculates to more than four hours. Twitter users spend an average of 169.9 minutes from mobile, or just less than three hours.

What is it about Instagram that makes it popular among users?

One answer found on an Instagram news blog posted back in Oct. 7, 2010, said, “Instagram makes mobile photos fast, simple, & beautiful. When we sat down three months ago to start designing our product, we looked at digital photos and realized very few exciting things had happened in the last 5 years. We’re setting out to change that, and this release is our first step along the way. “