Instagram passes 400m users as young shun tweets for photo op

Photo and video-sharing app's current challenge, however, is to make money from a youthful audience for whom Twitter is 'barely on the radar'

Instagram, with its Kardashian selfies, retro filters and endless stream of images of meals, has reached 400 million active users, the company has announced. Facebook's photo and video-sharing app has added 100 million users in the last nine months, with three-quarters now based outside the US.

"While milestones like this are important, what really excites us is the way that visual communication makes the world feel a little bit smaller to every one of us," the company said in a blog post, revealing that its fastest-growing countries include Brazil, Japan and Indonesia.