Instagram has officially crossed 3 billion monthly active users, a milestone revealed by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram Head Adam Mosseri. The achievement cements Instagram’s position as one of the most influential platforms shaping digital culture, social interaction, and online content creation worldwide.
In a recent video, Mosseri noted that the platform’s growth in recent years has been driven primarily by direct messages (DMs), Reels, and AI-powered recommendations. “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”, Mosseri explained.
To address user concerns about relevance and control, Instagram will begin testing a Reels algorithm tuning feature. This will allow users to:
- Select or remove topics that Instagram assumes they’re interested in.
- Adjust feeds according to changing preferences – for example, pausing sports content if interest fades.
The feature may later expand beyond Reels to other areas of Instagram. Additionally, Instagram is planning a navigation update: the bottom bar’s upload button will be replaced with a direct link to DMs, reflecting the growing role of private messaging in user engagement.
Instagram previously reached 1 billion users in 2018. Surpassing 3 billion underscores both its rapid expansion and its central role in Meta’s ecosystem, alongside Facebook and WhatsApp. Mosseri’s announcement also signals Instagram’s broader evolution in step with Meta’s ambitions in AI and the metaverse, showing how user personalization and private interactions remain at the core of the platform’s future.
