Instagram touches 3 billion monthly user milestone

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Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday that Instagram has crossed 3 billion monthly active users, nearly four years after the platform was last reported to have 2 billion. 

The announcement was made on Threads, Instagram's sister microblogging app launched in 2023.

The milestone brings Instagram in line with other Meta services, with Facebook reaching 3 billion users in January and WhatsApp in April. Meta has not clarified whether Threads users are included in the new Instagram tally.

Bloomberg reported that direct messaging and Reels short videos are the strongest drivers of Instagram's growth. 

The company is testing interface changes to make DMs and Reels more prominent and is also rolling out updates to give users more control over recommended topics in their feeds.

India, where TikTok has been banned since 2020, remains one of Instagram’s largest markets with an estimated 414 million users. 

Meta is set to test a feature there and in South Korea that will default the app to open directly into Reels, underlining its push to capture short-video audiences in markets where rivals are limited.

The milestone notwithstanding, the size of Instagram's user base remains partly clouded by the presence of bots.

Independent studies estimate at least 95 million fake or automated accounts on the platform, suggesting that several percentage points of the reported total may be inflated.