Instagram is testing Direct, a messaging app that replaces the current inbox

Instagram is testing a standalone app for private messages called Direct, a first step toward possibly toward removing messaging features from the core app. Direct, which opens to the camera in the same way Snapchat does, will become available on Android and iOS today in six countries: Chile, Israel, Italy, Portugal, Turkey, and Uruguay. If you install Direct, the inbox disappears from the Instagram app and can only be accessed in the messaging app. If Instagram introduces Direct globally — it currently has no timeline for doing so — the move could give parent company Facebook a third popular messaging tool alongside Messenger and WhatsApp.
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Although it is officially only a test, Instagram’s rationale for building Direct app is that private messaging can never be a best-in-class experience when it lives inside an app meant for broadcasting publicly. “We want Instagram to be a place for all of your moments, and private sharing with close friends is an important part of that,” Hemal Shah, an Instagram product manager, told me. “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.”

If that sounds familiar, it’s because Facebook has undertake a transition like this before. In 2014, the company shut off messaging inside the flagship app, forcing users to download Messenger. “On mobile, each app can only focus on doing one thing well,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the time. “Asking folks to install another app is a short term painful thing, but if we wanted to focus on serving this [use case] well, we had to build a dedicated and focused experience.”

Direct was built according to similar logic. While direct messaging was originally an afterthought in Instagram, after multiple redesigns it had accumulated 375 million monthly users by April of this year, the company says. Its rise has coincided with the growth of Instagram stories, which encourage users to fire back quick replies to friends’ messages by adding a “send message” box underneath each one.

Now Instagram will see whether its tools for private messages can thrive on their own. There is reason to believe that they will: messaging apps have more aggregate users than social networks do, and some have speculated that growing cultural tensions are pushing more conversations from public forums to private groups. If messaging becomes a large, pseudo-independent pillar of Instagram, it could further entrench the app in the lives of its users while opening up significant new business opportunities.

Source:- The Verge