It was recently announced that Instagram has passed Twitter in terms of monthly active users. Twitter has 284 Million, and Instagram now has 300 Million. While these types of number are always being announced, it seems that this time it has helped fan the flames of animosity between the two companies.
In an interview with Twitter co-founder and current board member, Evan Williams, done by Fortune, there were some interesting and aggressive comments made. After being asked about the recent announcement by Instagram, he had the following to say:
If you think about the impact Twitter has on the world versus Instagram, it’s pretty significant. It’s at least apples to oranges. Twitter is what we wanted it to be. It’s this real-time information network where everything in the world that happens on Twitter – important stuff breaks on Twitter and world leaders have conversations on Twitter. If that’s happening, I frankly don’t give a shit if Instagram has more people looking at pretty pictures.
To escalate this budding feud even further, Instagram’s co-founder Mike Krieger said that they will be working on making Instagram a more news friendly social service. They have some advancements that are being worked on to help make it easier for people to find, share and discuss news items. With that move, they would be stepping directly on the toes of Twitter, especially after the comments made above.
Over the next year these two companies are likely going to be going head to head in a number of ways. It will certainly be something marketers want to watch closely. Depending on how things play out, this could be the beginning of the next major rivalry that could be similar to the Microsoft v. Apple or Microsoft v. Google’s of the past.
