In just nine months, the photo-sharing startup hit 150 million pix and more than 7 million users who upload about 1.3 million photos daily (15 per second).

[…]

It took Flickr, one of the world’s largest photo-sharing sites, close to 2.5 years to reach 150 million photos, which could be uploaded from any computer and shot on any camera. But it took San Francisco-based startup Instagram roughly just nine months to hit that same milestone–with just one mobile app, available on just one device maker’s OS (Apple’s).

The interview and article is from FastCompany.com. The interview is good but I think the comparison between Instagram and Flickr that’s made by the author is unnecessary and incorrect.

Instagram has grown faster than flickr, that’s true, but I don’t think the comparison is very good. To me flickr is clearly a service aimed at photographers, amateurs and professionals alike. The users main focus is to show photos as art. Instagram is much more of a ”traditional” social network, but with images instead of text.

Just to clarify, I love Instagram and use it as a way of telling people I know about what I’m up to. I also love Flickr.

(Extra bonus irony-points to the article for using a picture from Flickr for illustration. Tough, I don’t think irony was what they were aiming for.)