Figures from an App tracking firm AppData, reflects that Instagram has lost 4 million daily active users, this forms a 25% decline in its active users from 16.4 million to 12.4 million.
Just a week after Instagram faced a blacklash in response to it revised terms of services, App Data recorded the decline in its active user count. App data was positive that the decline they recorded was a result of the non-friendly modifications in the terms of service by the photo sharing service.
However, CNET reported that Instagram denied the report by AppData saying that “This data is inaccurate,”.”We continue to see strong and steady growth in both registered and active users of Instagram.” the company’s spokesperson told CNET in an email.
It is important to mention that this report, which Instagram declared to be inaccurate, has already knocked down Facebook’s stock today.
Now if we take a closer look at the figured provided by AppData, it appears that the App tracking service only records users who log into Instagram through Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB). So whatever the figures that AppData presented, they represent a small subset of Instagram’s users who connect their photo sharing app with Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB). If the app tracking firm took this data into account to analyze the decline in Instagram’s daily active user, specially on a holiday season, it most likely is inaccurate and Instagram might not be wrong in this public denial at all. Moreover, it seems highly unlikely that millions of people suddenly decided to abandon the photo sharing service just because it changed some clauses in its terms of service.
Interestingly, AppData’s own figures reveals that Instagram’s weekly and monthly users are steadily climbing.
Techcrunch’s take on this matter seems convincing as well. According to the website, the arrival of new photo sharing services for mobile, like Snapseed or Flickr, might gain people’s attention. They wondered whether the newly launched apps could replace Instagram.
Taking all of these facts in account, we may conclude that the pattern of decreased usage recorded by AppData may not be the direct consequeunce of the latest debacle. Christmas holidays and the arrival of new apps in the market can most definitely be a potential reason for a decline in the use of the Facebook-owned photo sharing service.
