It all started in October 2010 when Instagram was launched as a photo sharing program, allowing users of iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch to take a photo, apply a digital filter to it and then share it on a variety of social networking services, including its own. In less than two years, the company was able to take the social media industry by storm. Instagram created such a craze that even a giant like Facebook caught its fever and snapped it up for approximately $1 billion in cash and stock in April 2012.

Instagram, now available on Android devices, has somewhere around 50 million users, and is on its way to hit the 100 million mark, thereby joining the biggies like LinkedIn, Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook.

The website Online Colleges is an online university database that has come up with an interesting infographic, explaining Instagram's growth since its launch. The infographic, titled Instagram Nation, includes some impressive stats behind the mobile photography app that has become the smartphone photographer's app of choice.

As Mashable noted, the infographic focuses on college students' adoption of the app. Suggesting that professors and campus professionals use Instagram to promote the community through photo contests, the infographic also recommends that students follow professors to learn about their interests outside of the classroom.

Some of the interesting stats mentioned in the infographic include:

  • Instagram gains one new user every second.
  • There are currently over 40 million users worldwide.
  • Over 1 billion photos have been uploaded to Instagram.
  • More than 5 million photos are uploaded every single day.
  • That's roughly 58 photos uploaded per second.

Take a look at the infographic below:

Courtesy of: Online Colleges