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Instagram Worth $35 Billion, Surpasses Twitter

Instagram Worth $35 Billion, Surpasses Twitter
The Instagram logo is displayed on a tablet on December 20, 2012 in Paris. Instagram backed down on December 18, 2012 from a planned policy change that appeared to clear the way for the mobile photo sharing service to sell pictures without compensation, after users cried foul. Changes to the Instagram privacy policy and terms of service set to take effect January 16 had included wording that appeared to allow people's pictures to be used by advertisers at Instagram or Facebook worldwide, royalty-free. AFP PHOTO / LIONEL BONAVENTURE (Photo credit should read LIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP/Getty Images)
LIONEL BONAVENTURE via Getty Images
The Instagram logo is displayed on a tablet on December 20, 2012 in Paris. Instagram backed down on December 18, 2012 from a planned policy change that appeared to clear the way for the mobile photo sharing service to sell pictures without compensation, after users cried foul. Changes to the Instagram privacy policy and terms of service set to take effect January 16 had included wording that appeared to allow people's pictures to be used by advertisers at Instagram or Facebook worldwide, royalty-free. AFP PHOTO / LIONEL BONAVENTURE (Photo credit should read LIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP/Getty Images)

NEW YORK: Photo sharing website Instagram, which has more than 16 billion users - a figure much higher than Twitter - has been valued at $35 billion by Citigroup.

This beats Twitter's market cap of $23 billion by a wide margin, wired.com reported.

In April 2012, Instagram was acquired by Facebook for $1 billion and had about 30 million users. The app was downloaded over a million times on the day the Android version hit, and has continued to grow.

In the last nine months, Instagram's user base grew 50 percent, while Twitter could only boost it's active user base by 4.8 percent in the last quarter.

Also, Instagram wants real people and accounts, two days ago, it cleaned up the spam on its network, and deleted millions of fake accounts.

Things could get even better for Instagram, with easy to decipher photos that have a universal appeal, unlike Twitter's feed, with hashtags and location based tweets that need time to understand.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.