Instagram on Thursday announced that it’s rolling out Blend, a new feature that lets you create a custom, personalized reels feed for you and your friends. Blends are invite-only and can be created with a singular friend or with a group chat. The custom feeds are refreshed with new content each day.
The launch doesn’t come as a surprise, as TechCrunch reported in March 2024 that the social network was developing the feature.
Once you join or accept a Blend invite, you will be able to browse through reels picked for each person in the chat. When someone in the group reacts to a reel, Instagram will notify you so you can keep a convo going in the DM (direct messaging) chat.
The idea behind the feature is to explore what sorts of reels your friends are into, while also connecting with them and discovering new content together. Blend aims to introduce a new social element to Instagram, bringing it closer to its roots of sharing moments with friends, something that’s been overshadowed in recent years by an influx of influencers and ads.
With the launch of Blend, Instagram is giving users access to a feature that isn’t available on TikTok, which is one of Instagram’s biggest rivals.
For Instagram, Blend could be a way to boost reels’ discovery and watch time on the social network, as it’s encouraging users to watch short-form content together.
To create a Blend, you need to open a one-on-one or group DM chat and tap the new Blend icon at the top of the chat. Then, you need to select “Invite” to invite people from your DM chat to join the Blend. The Blend will be created when at least one member of the chat accepts your invite. You can revisit a Blend by going to the DM chat and tapping the Blend icon.
It’s worth noting that Blend is somewhat similar to Spotify’s functionality of the same name, which allows people to combine their tastes into one shared playlist that refreshes daily.
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In Meta’s antitrust trial on Wednesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified that TikTok’s success was a risk to Meta’s business, saying the short-form video app was a “top priority” and a “highly urgent” competitive threat when it arrived in 2018, according to Bloomberg and other outlets.
The reports come from a packed first week of testimony in the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s trial against the social networking giant. If the FTC’s lawyers prevail, the trial could potentially require Meta to spin out Instagram or WhatsApp as separate companies.
Notably, Zuckerberg admitted on Wednesday that TikTok’s arrival had directly impacted Meta, saying his company had observed that its “growth slowed down dramatically” when the TikTok became popular. He also said the ByteDance-owned app has continued to be a focus of Meta’s competitive efforts for several years.
ByteDance purchased Musical.ly in 2017, and merged it with TikTok the following year. Around the same time, Meta (then known as Facebook) stopped reporting Facebook’s user numbers in its quarterly reports, shifting to a new “family of apps” metric that encompassed Instagram and WhatsApp. The change was designed to hide the fact that Meta’s flagship app was seeing slowing growth.
Zuckerberg made another interesting comment during the trial in response to a question about social media platforms’ “network effects.” He said it’s become less important for social media apps to leverage connections between friends and family to grow.
“The apps now serve primarily as discovery engines,” Zuckerberg told the court. “People can take that content to messaging engines.”
At the same time, however, Facebook is trying to return to its “OG roots” by turning once again to those network effects. The company recently released new features designed to make it easier to connect with friends, including a revamped Friends tab that highlights friend requests and activity. In January, Zuckerberg told investors that a “return to OG Facebook” was a key goal for 2025.
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