Instagram has announced that there are now new features when it comes to DMs on the platform.
As of late, Meta added message editing, which will enable you to update your DM for up to 15 minutes after sending.
Whatsapp recently rolled out this feature last year, and considering Meta’s broader plan to eventually merge all of its messaging tools into a single platform, it makes sense for it to implement feature parity across its apps.
Instagram users will also be able to pin up to three chats at the top of their DM inbox, so they will be able to respond to the most important discussions.
Instagram’s also adding the capacity to switch on read receipts for either all DM chats or specific threads, while it’s also adding new chat themes to customize your engagement.
Instagram’s also adding a new option to save your favorite stickers in the app, which will keep them at the top of the sticker tray, making it easier to include them in your DMs.
With these changes, Meta is now making a similar feature environment across all of their app for users to use more broadly.
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Back in 2022, in response to user concerns that they were no longer seeing updates from the profiles that they follow in the app, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri noted, “Friends post a lot more to stories and send a lot more DMs than they post to Feed.”
Mosseri’s answer to the problem, as a result of more AI-based recommendations appearing in-stream, was that users aren’t posting to the main feed anymore either way, which meant that this was less of a concern in terms of overall usage.
In a recent overview of its platform performance, Meta noted that 40% of the content that people see on Instagram now comes via AI recommendations, which has led to a 6% increase in time spent in the app over the past year.
While people may be seeing fewer posts from profiles that they’ve chosen to follow in the main feed, most people are sharing in DMs anyway.
Mosseri has underlined this once again in today’s announcement, with one slight amendment.
The CEO stated, “When you think of Instagram, you probably think of a feed of square photos. But how Instagram works has changed a lot over the years, and if you look at what people share, and how people express their creativity, the primary way they do so is actually DMs on Instagram. More photos and videos are shared in DMs than are to Stories or to feed on any given day.”
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Stories is now also becoming a secondary consideration, with DMs now the primary channel for engagement between users, as the main feed becomes more of a TikTok-like stream of recommended entertainment.
