Are you one of the millions addicted to Instagram? If so, get ready to be even more addicted as the social media app just updated and added a new feature to compete with other social apps such as Twitter and Facebook.
Instagram’s founder Kevin Systrom announced that the popular photo-sharing service is introducing private photo-sharing and messaging. The new feature is called Instagram Direct.
The mostly public social app’s new direct messaging allows users to choose a specific friend and type a message or send a picture or video that will only go to that friend.
“Communication is not about photography, necessarily,” said CEO Kevin Systrom said during the announcement on Thursday. “If we were about photography we’d be built into cameras but we’re not, we’re built into phones.” Instagram up to this point focused on photos and videos — “moments” — as Instagram calls them. Messaging adds a third dimension to the app that lets people communicate using words, Systrom says, but more importantly to do so privately, if you’d like. “Sometimes you want to be able to share not with everyone, but just with a specific group,”
Many users are declaring that the new feature will cause some relationship woes as it does on Facebook now that users can share private messages and moments with specific individuals versus a group of friends, however, you can send Direct messages up to 15 people at once which is a great feature for party invites or events. Instagram Direct also offers suggested recipients based on your usage.
By adding private messaging to its app, Instagram is now one step closer to their main competitors,Facebook and Twitter, but more favorable to its users.
