Instagram Reaches 3 Billion Users as Meta Shifts to Reels and DMs

Instagram has reached 3 billion monthly active users, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Wednesday, a milestone the company revealed as the app prepares to make Reels and private messaging more prominent in its interface. Zuckerberg posted the figure on Threads, and Instagram head Adam Mosseri said the growth has been driven largely by direct messages, Reels and recommendations from accounts users do not already follow.

Meta plans to reorganize the app around those three elements over the next few months, Mosseri said in an Instagram post. The company will roll out a redesigned navigation bar that highlights private messaging and Reels, according to Bloomberg, and an Instagram spokesperson said Reels would be moved to the second tab while direct messages would occupy the middle tab. Meta will also test making Reels the default feed in South Korea and India, and the company’s recently released iPad app already defaults to Reels, Instagram said.

To give users more control over the shift toward recommended content, Mosseri described a new settings page that lists topics Instagram believes users like. People will be able to add or remove interests to influence what appears,...