Instagram appears to be in the process of bringing direct messaging to its desktop website.
This was uncovered by Jane Manchun Wong who shared a series of screenshots on Twitter:
As Wong states in one of the tweets shown above, Instagram Direct on desktop closely resembles the Facebook Messenger experience on desktop.
Perhaps motivated by the popularity of Facebook Messenger, Instagram is making efforts to have its platform seen as more of a destination for direct messaging.
Just last week, Instagram introduced Threads, which is a standalone messaging app for communicating with your closest Instagram friends.
According to another leak from Jane Manchun Wong, Instagram is adopting another Messenger-like feature in the form of a “Shared” section which is a collection of all media shared in a particular chat.
Instagram is testing “Shared” section in Direct showing all “Photos and Videos” and “Posts” that’s shared in the chat pic.twitter.com/PJzh8wFpja
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) October 10, 2019
The real question is what will it take for users to take Instagram direct messaging more seriously? The market for direct messaging apps is already crowded, and Threads is reportedly struggling to take off.
According to Business Insider, less than 0.1% of Instagram users have downloaded the Threads app. Instagram clearly has work to do in this area and it looks like the company is putting in said work with these forthcoming updates.
