Instagram has become Meta’s third 3 billion user app, with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announcing that IG is the latest to cross the record-setting user mark.
Both Zuckerberg and Instagram chief Adam Mosseri have made announcements about the milestone, which once again re-establishes Meta as the king of the heap in social media apps, with Facebook, WhatsApp and now Instagram clearly leading the way in overall usage.
It’s difficult to overstate the significance of that number. We talk about user counts so often that what they actually represent often becomes meaningless, but 3 billion users equates to more than a third of all people in existence, who are logging into the app each month. And when you also factor in that none of Meta’s apps are available in China, the second-most populous nation in the world, and many regions still don’t have internet access, it’s likely that more than half of all people in the world that can access IG do so regularly.
In celebration of reaching 3 billion users, Instagram has also announced a couple of updates
First off, IG is testing a new feature that will highlight the topics that you’ve been engaging with within Reels, which you’ll then be able to edit to indicate what you want to see more or less of.
As you can see in this example sequence, now, when you tap on the adjustment icon, you’ll be able to see a listing of topics that the Reels algorithm thinks you like. You’ll then be able to remove topics, add others, and also exclude specific things that you don’t like in the lower element. Reels will then highlight the topics that you like seeing with new tags in-stream.
That could be a handy option to help customize your Reels experience, and have more direct input into what you see. Of course, I would expect that few people will actually use it, because for all the talk about algorithmic input, most people are now so used to just being shown what they like that they expect the algorithms to do the work for them, without manual intervention.
But for those who want to take control, you’ll now have another option to do so.
Reels is also the focus of this second update, which is a UI change relating to the lower bar icons, which IG hopes will make it easier to switch between the Home feed, Reels and DMs from the main app screen.
As you can see in these example screens, Instagram’s updating its icons, and moving the DM button from the top of the screen to the bottom, so that all three of the app’s main functions are easily accessible along that function bar.
The create icon will be moved to the top left of screen for all formats, while the search icon will move slightly to the right.
These are some interesting updates, which could have a significant impact on how people use each element, with the updated UI being more in line with modern IG use.
Though, really, Reels is now the star of the show.
For a long time, I’ve expected Instagram to actually open to Reels instead, given that Reels is now the most used element of the app, and people are spending more and more time viewing Reels clips. It actually did do this for the recently released iPad app, which opens to Reels direct, but it seems that Instagram is sticking to its legacy use case, in opening to the home feed in the main app.
But at 3 billion users, they clearly know what they’re doing, while Meta once again demonstrates that it’s the king of growing compulsive platforms.
