Instagram Takes Cues From Snapchat Again With Disappearing Messages
IG is fastly becoming part of the “Can I Copy Your Homework?” meme.
Instagram is taking a page out of Snapchat‘s playbook once again with a new update to its ‘Direct’ messaging feature. As avid social media users already know, IG ‘Live’ is essentially Snapchat, but now the platform is taking the art of copying from Snap another step further. As stated in Instagram’s announcement:
Today we’re launching the new Direct to make it fast and easy to turn any conversation into a visual conversation with photos and videos. Texts and reshares will now appear in the same thread with disappearing photos and videos so you can seamlessly go back and forth with your friends.
If that sounds familiar, well, that’s basically what Snapchat is already doing — watch the video above for a full visual explanation involving a rock, paper, and scissors. Furthermore, there’s the blue camera icon placed differently on the Direct screen and that tool is essential to the platform in three sections — find it at the bottom, by individual threads and inside individual threads.
According to Mashable: “Still, Instagram has the bigger audience. Instagram reported Tuesday that the number of people using Direct has grown from 300 million in November 2016 to 375 million every month. Snapchat does not report monthly active users but last touted 161 million daily active users.”
