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Vine, the Twitter-owned six-second mobile video service, just celebrated its first birthday. And for a one-year-old, it’s growing surprisingly fast.
The company hit the 40 million registered users mark in August, four times the amount that Instagram — now the service’s most comparable competitor — had at its one-year anniversary back in 2010. And in the span of a year, Vine managed to roll out a Web presence while attracting an ample amount of celebrities to the service.
While an important milestone for the small team, it’s especially notable for Twitter, which tried and failed at one point to acquire Instagram before Mark Zuckerberg came in and sealed the deal. It’s also important to keep that momentum as Instagram’s video — and even messaging — services begin to pick up steam.
This growth, however, comes with a bunch of caveats. When Instagram first launched in 2010, mobile phones weren’t nearly as powerful as the ones we have today. Advances in mobile phone camera hardware, in particular, have brought the industry forward by leaps and bounds.
Not to mention the current-day ubiquity of 4G cellular network coverage in the United States, and the rise of the “feed” interface, now ever-so-prevalent in many of today’s social apps. One could argue that without apps like Instagram and Facebook, Vine wouldn’t have had its runway for hyper-growth paved out so neatly in front of it.
(And I’ll really be impressed when Vine shares monthly active user numbers — the industry standard — rather than just registered ones.)
Regardless, I’d imagine it’s a happy birthday for the team. (Try watching this 18 minute clip reel of strung-together Vines to get a kick out of what crazy stuff people are doing on the service.)
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
