Instagram is closer than ever to a billion users

It's only a matter of time until Instagram joins Facebook's billion-user club.

The company announced Wednesday the photo sharing app has reached 700 million monthly active users, up from 600 million in December.

Though the Facebook-owned app has been steadily growing in recent years, the company credits the recent growth to its improved sign-up process, its initially controversial feed changes, and efforts to reach new users around the world.

Unlike WhatsApp, Messenger and the main Facebook app, Instagram hasn't had a standalone experience optimized specifically for developing markets. However, it recently began testing an offline version for Android.

The latest growth comes on the heels of the app's biggest year yet. Its Stories feature is growing faster than all of Snapchat, and the app has more advertisers than ever with no slowdown in sight.

Instagram notes that its latest stats are the fastest jump yet for the nearly 7-year-old app. International growth likely accounts for much of the rise — the company previously said the majority of its users are now located outside the U.S.

Combine that with new initiatives like a more personalized (read: algorithmic) feed and new features like offline functionality, and it's not surprising the once bandwidth-intensive app is growing like never before.