Instagram now has 3 billion monthly active users, will test features to help users control their feeds

Instagram has grown to 3 billion monthly active users, according to announcements by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram Head Adam Mosseri.

This is a notable milestone for the Meta-owned platform, which hit 1 billion users back in 2018.

“If you look at the last few years, almost all of our growth has been driven by DMs, Reels, and recommendations,” Mosseri said in an Instagram video. “Because of that, we’re going to continue to focus on those products and reorient the app more around DMs, Reels, and recommendations over the next couple of months.”

While the emphasis on short-form video and recommendations from accounts users don’t follow has driven growth on Instagram, these changes have sparked some frustration among users who are more interested in seeing photos or other content from people they already know.

In the next few months, Mosseri said, Instagram will test a way for users to fine-tune the algorithm that recommends content on Reels — later, this feature may extend to other feeds on Instagram.

Image Credits:Instagram

According to an early version of the feature that Mosseri shared, users will be able to toggle topics that the app thinks they are interested in.

Based on your activity, Instagram may decide to show you content around topics like college football, film photography, and chess, for example — but if your favorite team is struggling and you’re growing weary of college football reels, you can remove that topic from your algorithm. Instagram also plans to edit the bottom navigation bar of the app to replace the button for uploading content with a more direct link to your DMs.

As Meta faces ongoing legal challenges on the alleged anticompetitive nature of its WhatsApp and Instagram acquisitions, the trial has surfaced internal emails that reveal more about the tensions between Facebook and Instagram. Instagram has grown more culturally relevant than Facebook, and while Meta benefits a great deal from that, Zuckerberg has expressed concerns that Instagram’s rise is contributing to Facebook’s decline in popularity. As Facebook becomes less popular among teenagers, Meta has spent the last few years strategizing how to make Facebook cool again.