LONDON: Meta Platforms’ Instagram has grown to 3 billion Monthly Active Users, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday, marking another milestone for one of the most popular social media apps in the world.
Meta last disclosed Instagram’s user figures in 2022 when Zuckerberg said the app had hit more than 2 billion monthly active users.
Meta, previously known as Facebook, bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, a move that had raised questions about the company’s strategy as the social media app had begun with just photo-sharing without significant revenue.
Since then the app has grown astronomically and some firms have estimated it will make up more than half of Meta’s US ad revenue this year.
A major factor contributing to Instagram’s success is the Reels feature which launched in 2020 and allows users to create short-form content — a market that faces fierce competition from rivals such as TikTok and Google-owned YouTube shorts.
TikTok, owned by Chinese technology behemoth ByteDance, has more than 1 billion users globally who visit monthly, a company spokesperson said earlier this month.
Meta CEO Zuckerberg says Instagram has grown to 3 billion monthly active users
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Meta CEO Zuckerberg says Instagram has grown to 3 billion monthly active users
- Some firms have estimated that Instagram will make up more than half of Meta’s US ad revenue this year
China’s national security agency in Hong Kong summons international media representatives
HONG KONG: China’s national security agency in Hong Kong summoned international media representatives for a “regulatory talk” on Saturday, saying some had spread false information and smeared the government in recent reports on a deadly fire and upcoming legislative elections.
Senior journalists from several major outlets operating in the city, including AFP, were summoned to the meeting by the Office for Safeguarding National Security (OSNS), which was opened in 2020 following Beijing’s imposition of a wide-ranging national security law on the city.
Through the OSNS, Beijing’s security agents operate openly in Hong Kong, with powers to investigate and prosecute national security crimes.
“Recently, some foreign media reports on Hong Kong have disregarded facts, spread false information, distorted and smeared the government’s disaster relief and aftermath work, attacked and interfered with the Legislative Council election, (and) provoked social division and confrontation,” an OSNS statement posted online shortly after the meeting said.
At the meeting, an official who did not give his name read out a similar statement to media representatives.
He did not give specific examples of coverage that the OSNS had taken issue with, and did not take questions.
The online OSNS statement urged journalists to “not cross the legal red line.”
“The Office will not tolerate the actions of all anti-China and trouble-making elements in Hong Kong, and ‘don’t say we didn’t warn you’,” it read.
For the past week and a half, news coverage in Hong Kong has been dominated by a deadly blaze on a residential estate which killed at least 159 people.
Authorities have warned against crimes that “exploit the tragedy” and have reportedly arrested at least three people for sedition in the fire’s aftermath.
Dissent in Hong Kong has been all but quashed since Beijing brought in the national security law, after huge and sometimes violent protests in 2019.
Hong Kong’s electoral system was revamped in 2021 to ensure that only “patriots” could hold office, and the upcoming poll on Sunday will select a second batch of lawmakers under those rules.
