Twitter's Evan Williams: 'I frankly don’t give a shit if Instagram has more people looking at pretty pictures'
Twitter co-founder Evan Williams is reported to have said he "doesn't give a shit" that Instagram now has more active users than his social network.
This week Instagram proudly crowed that it had reached the 300 million active users milestone, surpassing Twitter's 284 million users.
But Williams seemed more concerned about comparisons between Twitter and Instagram than being threatened by the numbers.
He told Fortune reporter Erin Griffith: "If you think about the impact Twitter has on the world versus Instagram, it’s pretty significant. It’s at least apples to oranges. Twitter is what we wanted it to be. It’s this realtime information network where everything in the world that happens on Twitter—important stuff breaks on Twitter and world leaders have conversations on Twitter. If that’s happening, I frankly don’t give a shit if Instagram has more people looking at pretty pictures."
Williams reserved some of his ire for Instagram's owner Facebook, arguing that the user numbers for which it is celebrated are not fully scrutinised.
"Why is users the only thing we talk about? The crazy thing: Facebook has done an amazing job of establishing that as the metric for Wall Street. No one ever talks about, ‘What is a [monthly active user]?"
Instagram's growing stature has so far enticed brands such as Starbucks, Cadbury and Waitrose to invest in sponsored posts.