Instagram officially announces on Thursday that they have reached 600 million monthly active users, adding its latest 100 million users faster than it ever has before. That means it's added 100 million users in six months, its fastest growth rate ever, and has doubled its user base in just two years.

Instagram Celebrates With Its 600 Million Monthly Active Users

"Today we’re proud to announce our community has grown to more than 600 million Instagrammers. And the last 100 million of you joined in just the past six months. A lot has changed this year, but the Instagram community and the diversity of expression it provides has remained consistent." This is a quoted statement from the blog posted by Instagram on Thursday.

According to Mashable, Instagram also says they have experienced rapid growth in the past six months, with 100 million users added since June. As the blog post points out, a slew of new features has rolled out over that period, many of which have brought Instagram's core functions closer to that of its biggest competitor, Snapchat.

"And you now have more ways to share than ever before with Instagram Stories, live video and disappearing photos and videos in Direct. Additionally, with updated safety tools that give you more control over comments and other parts of your experience, we’re working to make Instagram safer than ever for connection and self-expression."

Instagram Takes On Other Social Networks
As per CNBC, Instagram's accelerating growth is particularly striking in contrast to Twitter, which has a very different product and has struggled with stagnating user growth. Instagram is now twice the size of Twitter, which has been stuck at around 300 million users since the first quarter of 2015.

Also, this success of IG shows that the increasing popularity of rival Snapchat is not eating into company's growth. In fact, Instagram has added new features and continuously thinks of more new things to be added to the platform.