Instagram Saw 78% Traffic Increase Due To Merger Hype

Sites include Facebook.com , instagram.com . Published on June 13th, 2012. Written by Anthony West.

The $1 billion buyout by Facebook seems to have done Instagram a world of good because according to ComScore, traffic was up in April on news of the merger between the two companies.

Instagram saw a total of 14.6 million unique visitors in April as opposed to the 8.2 million it saw in March—a whopping 78% increase over the month. But the traffic spike wasn’t all down to Facebook’s buyout; Instagram had announced the launch of an Android App and this apparently sent news far and wide that one of the fastest growing apps was coming to the little green robot. Android gets around 600,000 activations daily so the fact that it contributed to a traffic spike for Instagram is really no surprise.

Of course a lot has happened since April and ComScore’s data will be little comfort for the people at Instagram who have now lost over $200 million in stock due to the Facebook IPO fiasco. Now lawsuits are flying all over the place and Mark Zuckerberg and co are now busy (in the background) working out plans to rescue the Facebook stock.

How that will go is anyone’s guess but back when the Facebook acquisition of Instagram broke, many said $1 billion was too much. Perhaps it wasn’t the acquired product that was the problem; now we see that its Facebook’s inherent value (or lack thereof) that is causing the trouble.