Social media is all about easing communication and sharing. And Instagram is learning a lot from its days being one of the most popular social app out there.
With Facebook behind its back, the photo-sharing platform is working and created 'Direct', a dedicated messaging app that is a standalone app, away from the mainstream Instagram.
Instagram believes that a messaging app won't have the ability to truly shine, if it's tethered into something else. With Direct, the company hopes that this could one day remove the built-in direct messaging feature from Instagram. - just like how Facebook did with Facebook Messenger.
When it was first released in 2011, and became the default messaging experience for Facebook in 2014, Facebook Messenger has expanded massively. As a standalone app, Messenger stands on its own brand, and able to improvise without the limitation or complicating Facebook's core app.
Since then, Messenger has included things like video chatting, games, payments, and much more. This is certainly a lot more feature than the previous iteration, Facebook Chat, which was embedded inside Facebook.
According to Instagram:
For Instagram's first shot in creating a standalone app, Direct is initially bare to the bone.
Opening the app, will open the built-in camera feature. This is to make users to create and share contents. Users can also see their profile and settings, besides just sending and viewing messages from other Instagram users.
At the moment of its introduction, Instagram launches Direct to users in six countries: Israel, Italy, Chile, Portugal, Turkey, and Uruguay, on both Android and iOS.
It should be noted that users that are able to download Direct and install the app, the app will make Instagram's inbox to disappear.
According to Hemal Shah, an Instagram product manager:
“Direct has grown within Instagram over the past four years, but we can make it even better if it stands on its own. We can push the boundaries to create the fastest and most creative space for private sharing when Direct is a camera-first, standalone app."