Instagram reaches 300 million users, starts verifying celeb accounts

Instagram has announced that the service has reached a landmark 300 million users, with those users uploading more than 70 million photos and videos every day. That means it’s now bigger than Twitter, which has 284m users.

As is the way with social media services of that size, fake accounts are everywhere — prompting Instagram to introduce verification badges for celebrities, brands, and anyone else with a serious number of followers. It’s similar to the one already used on Twitter, though I’d imagine it’s much harder to fake being someone you’re not when pictures and video are involved.

Sadly the badges are only available to people who have a high chance of being impersonated, so you can’t go out there and claim one for yourself. But since Twitter allows users to request verification, it wouldn’t be surprising if this feature was implemented sometime in the future — likely with a strict set of criteria.

One final update from the Instagram team mentioned that extra work is being done to deal with spam, and this will involve permanently deleting spam accounts. This will mean some people will have a reduced follower account, but apparently Instagram will be notifying people when this happens.