The popular social media app Instagram adds new messaging features to its platform.
Instagram adds new messaging features
With messaging becoming increasingly prevalent in the Instagram experience, the Meta-owned app has today introduced a slew of Instagram new features on messaging, including quick replies, silent messages, music sharing in chat, new chat themes, and more.
Quick replies
Instagram is also adding a “reply while you browse” option, which will allow users to respond to a message in-stream without having to open their Direct Message inbox. With a DM from a new drop-down panel appearing and allowing the user to reply right then and there without having to access their inbox.
This seems to be in line with Instagram’s efforts of keeping users engaged with their feed for longer with another new feature, the fullscreen main feed, being tested. This is made even more evident by the fact that they added back the highly requested chronological feed feature, making it not the default feed but an option you have to choose each time you want to use the feature.
As we’ve said Instagram adds new messaging features and one of them is a quick send option, which will highlight your closest friends when you tap and hold the share button on a post, making it simpler to send a DM without interrupting your browsing. They are also adding new online indicators in your DM panel.
In the blog post about these new changes, Instagram wrote:
“At the top of your inbox, you can see who’s free to chat at that moment, helping you find serendipitous opportunities to connect with friends.”
This might be a good approach to encourage more app usage, which could lead to even more people sending Direct DMs.
Silent messages
Instagram is also introducing new chat themes, as well as expanded messaging control choices and polls in group chats. Instagram said this on polls on group chats:
“Deciding where to go to dinner or what time to meet up? We’re bringing one of Messenger’s most beloved group chat features to Instagram so you can create a poll directly in your group chat.”
Instagram new features also include @silent operator. The new @silent control was revealed on Messenger, along with a slew of other shortcuts that allow you to utilize Messenger features. Only the @silent operator has made it over to Instagram thus far, but it appears that others of these shortcut controls will soon make their way to Meta’s other messaging applications.
“Send messages without notifying friends late at night or when they’re busy by adding “@silent” in your message. Now you can reach out without worrying about sending unwanted notifications.”
Music sharing in chat
“Enabled by integrations with Apple Music, Amazon Music and Spotify coming soon, you can now share a 30-second preview of that song you just can’t get out of your head, and your friends can listen directly from the chat window.”
Instagram adds new messaging features and music sharing in chat is just really interesting. It’s possible that this could be a helpful method of sharing the newest songs with friends, and with music discovery becoming an increasingly important aspect of the social media experience led by TikTok, future Instagram new features may integrate more music engagement into the app.
Some of these features have previously been tested in the app, so you may have seen them before. However, they’ll now be available to all users, which will add a slew of new variables to Direct usage in the app. With messaging, in general, becoming a more prominent usage option, it makes sense for Instagram to lean into such trends and facilitate more Direct interaction.
Finally, if Meta’s major messaging integration plan goes forward, all of these features will be connected to WhatsApp and Messenger as well, allowing you to send messages to any of your contacts in each app and providing many of the same capabilities to Meta’s other messaging services.
How to use Instagram Highlights?
As a result, every messaging upgrade in any Meta-owned program should be regarded as a stepping stone to the next stage, when messaging is made available on a larger, more inclusive scale and enables people to connect and interact in more ways. Instagram adds new messaging features but will we see new filters or editing tools in the near feature?
