Instagram App Crosses 1M Downloads Within 24 Hours Of Google Play Launch; Many Users On Waiting List

Instagram, a free image editing application (which became popular on Apple's iOS), was officially launched for the Android platform yesterday. And within a day of its launch, the app has already been downloaded more than a million times from Google Play. Additionally, there are already more than 0.43 million Android users in the waiting list for downloading it.

Instagram already has more than 30 million registered users on the iOS platform and more than 1 billion photos have already been uploaded, with over 5 million photos being uploaded on a daily basis. The app can run on any camera phone running on the Android 2.2 operating system or above with support for OpenGL ES 2 (a special graphics processing language that most of the smartphones support today).

Although the Android app offers a fairly similar experience when compared to the iOS app, there are a few features that have not been included in the first version of the Android app (like Tilt Shift/Blur, Share from Feed, Live Preview and Share to Flickr). But the company claims that the upcoming versions will bridge the differences.

The app is available for download in every country and supports English, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish languages.

Instagram was launched in October 2010 by co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger and the app allows users to snap pictures, apply filters on them (to transform the look and feel) and then share then on Instagram or upload them to other social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. Some of the app's features include; free custom designed filters and borders; instant sharing to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Foursquare (Flickr coming very soon); interaction with friends through giving and receiving likes and comments; full front and back camera support, among others.

"We're excited to bring you Instagram for Android. We've been working tirelessly to make this new Android app a first-class mobile photo-sharing experience and we have been meticulous about translating the Instagram experience to the Android platform. The Android app offers an extremely familiar Instagram experience when compared to the iOS app and you will find all the same exact filters and community as our iOS version," read an official Instagram blog.

The tremendous initial success of the app confirms what various app developers always claim; that even non-gaming apps can become popular if they can make a difference in the lives of the users. Also, the speed at which the app is being downloaded as of now, there are chances that it could surpass the '10 million downloads in just 3 days' mark set by the newest instalment of the popular Angry Birds game called Angry Birds Space.

Although we cannot deny the fact that most of the functions (filters, effects etc) that Instagram offers are already being offered by a number of different apps that are available on Google Play. So maybe this is just an initial hype that will die down, only time will tell.

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