According to an announcement by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram Head Adam Mosseri, Instagram has grown to 3 billion active users each month.
This is a notable milestone for the meta-owned platform that hit 1 billion users in 2018.
“Looking at the last few years, most of our growth has been driven by DMS, reels and recommendations,” Mosseri said in an Instagram video. “So we’ll continue to focus on these products and rotate the app more around DMs, reels and recommendations over the next few months.”
The emphasis on short form videos and recommendations that users on your account do not follow has driven growth on Instagram, but these changes have caused dissatisfaction among users who are interested in seeing photos and other content from people they already know.
In the coming months, Mosseri said, Instagram will test how users can fine-tune the algorithms that recommend content on the reel. This feature may then be extended to other feeds on Instagram.
According to the early version of the feature shared by Mosseri, users can switch between topics the app thinks is of interest to them.
For example, Instagram may decide to display content on topics like college football, film photos, chess, etc. based on your activities, but if your favorite team is struggling and you’re tired of college football reels, you can remove that topic from the algorithm. Instagram also plans to edit the app’s bottom navigation bar to replace the buttons to upload content to a more direct link to DMS.
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As Meta faces ongoing legal challenges regarding the alleged anti-competitive nature of WhatsApp and Instagram acquisitions, Trial has surfaced an internal email revealing more about tensions between Facebook and Instagram. While Instagram is more culturally relevant than Facebook, Meta has brought great benefits from it, Zuckerberg has expressed concern that Instagram’s rise has contributed to Facebook’s declining popularity. As Facebook has lost popularity among teenagers, Meta has spent the last few years strategizing how to make Facebook cool again.
