Instagram boss rules out dating feature as it already helps people find love

Instagram head Adam Mosseri has said he doesn’t expect the app to launch a dating feature, despite admitting that “in some ways, Instagram is a dating service.”

Answering a question from a follower on his Instagram Story, Mosseri said “I don’t think so” when asked about Instagram adding dating tools, explaining that a formal dating service “comes with a lot of extra work.”

He was quick to point out that plenty of people already use the app to find romance anyway. “We know that people find crushes, love, etc., all the time,” he said. “It’s a great way to reach out to someone.”

Mosseri pointed to features like replying to someone’s story or sending them a funny Reel, calling them “conversation starters, excuses to reach out to someone.”

“We know a lot goes down in the DMs,” he added.

Messaging has become central to Instagram’s plans. In a video on his Instagram in September 2025, Mosseri said almost all of the app’s recent growth had come from DMs, Reels and recommendations.

For now, he says Instagram is “in a good place” without dedicated dating tools. “People do use Instagram to help date, but we don’t and haven’t built a sort of formal dating service with profiles and, you know, swipe left, right, and all the rest of it,” he said.

That doesn’t mean Meta is staying out of dating altogether. Instagram’s parent company already runs Facebook Dating, which launched in the US in 2019 and lets users add Instagram photos to their profiles, along with a “Secret Crush” feature for people they follow on Instagram, according to Axios.

Meta has kept building on it since. In September 2025, it added an AI dating assistant and a feature called Meet Cute, which gives users a surprise match every week. At the time, Meta said hundreds of thousands of 18 to 29-year-olds in the US and Canada were creating Facebook Dating profiles every month.