Instagram Has 100,000 Downloads in China Each Week, Looking at Integration With Weibo

Instagram's Kevin Systrom on-stage at TC Disrupt Beijing moments ago.

This is a part of our TechCrunch Disrupt 2011 event coverage.

Kevin Systrom, the co-founder of popular photo-sharing app, Instagram revealed at Disrupt Beijing that his team’s Instagram app has a whopping 100,000 downloads in China each week. And worldwide, there is around one download per second and even more over the weekend.

Instagram got itself translated into ten languages – including simplified and traditional Chinese characters – within the first few week, which boosted the sky-rocketing first few months. Kevin says he realises that his start-up needs to do more than just languages in terms of localization, and knows that very few Chinese Instagram users share to Facebook. He said:

We need to customize the product to work more seamlessly with locales that are not the US – and that’s important to us […] One of the most interesting things is Weibo – that’d be a great option.

As for the numerous Instagram clones – such as the five Chinese photo-sharing sites we looked at recently – Kevin says it’s not at all a China specific issue, and that numerous countries have embraced filters-and-sharing apps.

And yes, Instagram appears to be pushing hard in China, though he did say that he isn’t intending to set up an office here. Nothing concrete has been announced yet.

Instagram is just a six man team and is serving over 12 million users. And when asked who uses Instagram, almost everyone in the room raised their hands. Wow.