Execs At Instagram Believe They Will Soon Eclipse Twitter As They Head Toward 1 Billion Users

Reuters/Philippe WojazerInstagram founder Kevin Systrom

Management at Instagram believes its user base will eventually grow to 1 billion monthly active users - making the photo sharing app far, far bigger than Twitter.

Currently, Instagram has 200 million monthly active users, putting it within catching distance of Twitter's 255 million MAUs.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has long believed that Twitter will reach every person on the planet. But user growth at Twitter has mostly stalled, and absent radical changes that goal looks like a pipe dream.

Instagram, however, is currently doubling its user base every year. That growth will slow, of course. But it would be a psychologically punishing moment for Costolo's people if Instagram eclipses Twitter.

Jim Squires / InstagramInstagram's Jim Squires

Jim Squires, Instagram's director/market operations recently sat down with Business Insider to discuss the state of the business and we asked him whether the 200 million user statistic merely represented downloads or current active users. The distinction is important because active users are more meaningful than people who download an app and then delete it.

Squires said the 200 million were MAUs, and that he expected that number to grow dramatically. "Because Instagram is imagery-oriented, it's universal ... we're very focused on growth and plan to grow it to 1 billion users. That's what we're doing." Instagram isn't bound by language - a cool picture from Thailand can go as viral as one from Boise, Idaho; but a Facebook post in English might grind to a halt where people speak Thai.

He noted that two-thirds of Instagram's users are outside the U.S., and that the app was seeing "heavy" growth internationally.

"I don't see that stopping anytime soon," Squires added.