Instagram passes 3 billion users and hands users a way to tune their own algorithm

Instagram has passed three billion users, its head announced, and nearly all of the platform's growth in recent years has come from three features: direct messages, Reels and recommendations of content from accounts people do not follow.

The app will keep reorienting itself around those three pillars in the coming months. For marketers the implication is clear: encourage audiences, followers and non-followers alike, to start direct-message conversations, and create content compelling enough to be shared and picked up by the recommendation algorithms.

Alongside the milestone, Instagram is rolling out a new way to train the algorithm. In settings, users will be able to add topics they are interested in and remove ones the app got wrong, an unusual degree of direct control over what the feed serves.

A new format trend is also spreading: tiny horizontal Reels, long, wide, skinny video posts that brands, creators and photographers are jumping on. The platform's official creators account noted the format works beyond the 5120x1080 aspect ratio many assumed was required.

On Facebook, users can now schedule personal profile posts from desktop, a capability long available on mobile. The catch: it only works on profiles switched to professional mode.

Separately, a perennial debate among marketers, how often to post, drew a contrarian take this week: ignore the experts who prescribe anything from ten posts a day to three a week, and let results and audience response set the cadence instead of someone else's rules.