Instagram's Messaging Feature Just Got A Massive Revamp

We already spend most of our waking hours either scrolling through our Instagram feeds, or planning out our 'grammable moments. Now, the company is about to claim an even bigger monopoly on your time.

Starting this week, you can use the app to start threaded conversations -- that means you can start a conversation using text, and respond to a photo with a photo, just like on a full-feature messaging app 

Your messaging here will also benefit from several new, true-to-Instagram additions: a camera feature that will let you intersperse quick selfies to your chats, and a jumbo-emoji keyboard that will let you post giant-sized versions of your favorite emojis (in my case, the cat-with-hearts-as-eyes-face.) But, the update that'll differentiate Instagram Direct from iMessage or any other standard texting app, will be the added ability to directly post images from your Insta feed to individual or group chats.

According to the press release, the @-mentions you use to refer a friend to a photo account for 40% of comments; now, you can discretely send a photo directly from your feed to get your friend to see it... because not everyone needs to know about their weird socks obsession.

Will we ever be able close this app, again?


Michelle No is an editorial assistant at Supercompressor. People with socks obsessions are her favorite kind of people. Insta-stalk her @MichelleNope.

Want more of the world's best Tech delivered straight to your inbox? Click here to sign up for our daily email.