LOS ANGELES: Instagram says it has surpassed the milestone of 3 billion monthly active users, with the photo and video platform reporting recent growth driven primarily by direct messages, short videos known as Reels, and recommendations.
According to Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram at parent company Meta, the app will be increasingly focused on these features in the coming months.
However, Instagram is also planning to allow users to customise the algorithm that selects recommendations of posts and Reels for them, and look more closely at the workings of something that was until largely a mystery to many users.
A new settings page will display Instagram's assessment of users' interests, enabling them to remove or add topics, and ultimately giving users more control over the content they see.
"You will be able to actually go to a page in the settings that lets you know what we think you're interested in ... and make all the changes you want," Mosseri said.
Initially, these changes will influence the selection of Reels, with other parts of the app to follow later.
Mosseri hinted that in the era of automated social media feeds driven by user data, "following (accounts) still matters, but not as much as it used to." As such, users are increasingly more interested in tweaking their algorithm than following certain accounts.
In the Reels segment, Instagram is competing with the video app TikTok, which has faced uncertainty about its future in the US for months. TikTok's US operations are now heading toward a potential sale. At the same time, YouTube has in recent years been staking a claim as a short video platform with what it calls Shorts.
TikTok's video selection is even more heavily determined by its algorithm, which considers factors such as whether users watch a clip for an extended period or quickly skip to the next video. – dpa
