Instagram, the photo-sharing app owned by Facebook, has expanded by more than 50 per cent this year, overtaking Twitter with 300m monthly active users taking, editing and sharing pictures on the social networking site.

The rapidly growing app, which shares 70m photos and videos a day, is popular in the fashion world and with teenagers, whom analysts fear have been deterred from using Facebook’s main app by their parents use of the platform. Instagram, which Facebook bought in 2012 for $1bn, is only just starting to generate revenues, as it experiments with sponsored posts and videos from brands including Levi’s and Michael Kors that would traditionally have been more at home in glossy magazines. The mobile advertising market is expected to pass $40bn this year, according to research group eMarketer.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive, has said that none of the company’s collection of apps needs to rush to generate revenue before they hit 1bn users.