Instagram hit 3 billion users... now what?

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Are fall resolutions a thing? I realized it’d 50 days til my 37th birthday and 100 days until 2026, so I just set a bunch of personal and professional intentions for the rest of the year, including for this newsletter. The big change: I have a team. I’m not a solopreneur anymore. But I’ll share more on that in the coming months.

Today, let’s chat about

• Instagram hitting a major user milestone

• What it means for TikTok and YouTube

• How brands should take Instagram’s big news

—Jack Appleby

Instagram Just Hit 3 Billion Users… Now What?

Good ol’ Adam Mosseri just reported that Instagram now has 3 billion monthly active users. That’s rare air. Only two other apps have ever hit that milestone, and one is their step-dad, Facebook, and the other’s their step-brother, WhatsApp… yep, they’re all Meta apps.

It’s worth asking some questions about what it means for the overall social media landscape, where Instagram will head next, and the world at large. Because, uh, nearly half the planet now uses Instagram.

How Big Is 3 Billion? How’s it rank vs. other social media?

Let’s try to contextualize that behemoth of a number.

• The global population of the world’s about 8 billion people.

• There are about 5.4 billion social media users worldwide.

• After hitting that 3 billion number, Instagram alone touches about 40% of humanity.

Now let’s take a look at the other social networks. Here are most recently reported MAUs for every major social network, coming from a mixture of earnings reports, press releases, and estimations (since Twitter doesn’t tell us anything anymore).

• Facebook: 3.07B

• Instagram: 3B

• YouTube: 2.5B

• TikTok: 1.6–1.7B

• LinkedIn: 1B

• Snapchat: 800M

• X/Twitter: 600M

• Pinterest: 500M

It often feels like YouTube and TikTok get a whole lot more press than Instagram, but man, IG’s got a : lead right now. They really are playing in a different field altogether.

What It Means for the Social Landscape

• Meta’s dominance is absurd. Three platforms over 3B users (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram) means Meta pretty much just owns us.

• Instagram becomes the “default” social network. As long as I’ve worked in this industry, it’s always felt like there was a true king of the hill. For many years, it was Facebook—that’s how we naturally thought about social. Over the last 10, other contenders came in and had their moments (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter). And even though Facebook’s also sporting 3B+, it does feel like Instagram is new the “default.”

• If a social network develops a new feature, Instagram will just copy it. Instagram Stories came from Snapchat Stories. Reels cloned TikTok. Notes took from Twitter/X. Shopping feels ripped from Pinterest. Maybe it’s a shameless strategy, but it’s worked wonders and I don’t see why they’d ever stop, especially since they’ll have exponentially more audience for new features than whoever invents them.

• YouTube and TikTok become the most important non-Meta competitors. YouTube’s certainly different than most “social networks,” but considering every app’s become more entertainment, less social, it’s in the mix. TikTok’s still such a question mark with the potential sale. As humans, we should root for both to succeed, if only for there to be some competitive balance for Meta.

What’s Next For Instagram?

In the same Reel announcing the 3 billion marker, Head Of Instagram Adam Mosseri gave us a look into the next batch of changes they’re making.

Mosseri says that at the end of the day, 3 areas contributed to a significant amount of Instagram’s growth:

• DMs: people using IG as a messaging app / DMing each other content

• Reels: the most consumed content format on the platform

• Recommendations: Instagram’s ability to predict what content you want.

He specifically called out they’ll continue to build out the app with those 3 areas leading the way, though he made special care to call out some additional changes they’re making to give users more control (likely a smart proactive play to avoid another Make Instagram Instagram Again moment).

Instagram is going to roll out “algorithm tuning” tools to let people add or remove topics from their feed. On the surface, that’s about giving users choice. Underneath, it’s about making algorithmic distribution feel less like a black box. Pretty slick, and will be a welcome move for most users (personally, I’ll heavily increase how much emo music is in my feed). Here’s a look at it from Mosseri’s Reel.

What It Means for Brands

• Consumers are on Instagram, so your brand needs to be on Instagram. Your business pretty much doesn’t exist if you don’t have an IG. Remember, this isn’t all about making content for the feed—a lot of people use Instagram and other social networks as a search engine, too. Perfect example: I don’t care if your restaurant’s pumping out daily Reels, but I do want to visit your page for pics of your dishes when I’m deciding where to eat.

• Meta dominates paid social advertising. You’re gonna live inside Meta Business Suite. It’s the easiest and most effective place to spend money on social media advertising.

• Brand organic content’s gotta compete with creators, wedding pics, artists, and baby announcements. Everyone’s creative, everyone makes content, and your brand’s gotta be more interesting than every person, place, and thing if you want attention on the social network.

• Diversification is more important than ever. Meta owning the three 3B+ social networks means you absolutely gotta be on YouTube, TikTok, and every other social platform that makes sense. One sweeping Zuck strategic move can now affect two of your biggest social networks, so please, keep growing elsewhere for safety’s sake.

Welcome to the Instagram Era

This is so jargony, but Instagram really is a cultural operating system now. It dictates not only what people see, but how businesses are run and how societies communicate.

Net net? Lots of opportunity, plenty of risk. But IG is here to stay, so you better embrace it.

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