Instagram is testing replacing your “Following” count with a “Friends” counter. The mutuals, the ones who didn’t just accept your follow request and ghost you into the algorithmic void.

Adam Mosseri, Instagram’s chief, has been saying for a while now that the app’s heartbeat has moved from the main feed to direct messages. We’re not broadcasting our lives anymore; we’re curating small audiences of people we actually trust. If Instagram is becoming more about private sharing than public performance, why not highlight the people you’re actually connected with, rather than just the ones you’re watching from afar?

For years, the follower-to-following ratio has been the quiet arbiter of internet clout. A “Friends” counter shifts that dynamic, which sounds lovely in theory. Instagram seems to be betting that we care more about depth than breadth now. That we’d rather strengthen existing ties than keep adding strangers to our feeds. And maybe they’re right. 

Instagram’s “Friends” experiment is less about counting mutuals and more about reflecting what the platform has already become: a space for smaller, more intimate circles. The main feed isn’t the town square anymore, DMs are the real party.

So, will “Friends” become the new metric we obsess over? Will we start curating our mutuals the way we once curated our grids? Or will we finally admit that numbers were never the point?

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