• TechCrunch, Tuesday, June 14, 2011 12:01 PM

Less than a year old, mobile photo-sharing service Instagram just surpassed the 5 million member mark, and is showing no signs of letting up. "Just this past weekend, they added 100,000 new users," notes TechCrunch. "Even more amazing, there are now 1.25 million users for every one employee of Instagram." Part of Instagram's early success is being attributed to its popular API, which is now being accessed by over 2,500 applications.

Third-party Instagram applications are now being pioneered by everyone from fashion photographers to rock bands. All told, Instagram users have already posted more than 95 million photos, which means the start-up should cross the 100-million photo mark in a matter of day.

"For comparisons sake, it took Flickr two years to hit 100 million photos," according to TechCrunch. "If you still had any doubts that a mobile photo revolution is happening, there you go." Meanwhile, the emergence of Webstagram -- a web-based viewer for Instagram photos -- leads TechCrunch to the question of when Instagram will finally release its own web app.

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