Facebook has been hard at work over the course of the past year or so, trying to make it so that the various properties it has access to would be able to reflect their unity in ownership rather than seeming like disparate, random apps. This is a bold move because most tech acquisitions have not really resulted in a unification like this ever before, but it seems like Facebook is trying to combine the best of all worlds in a really special way.
Some updates that are coming to Instagram might just make it easier to understand the various ways in which something like this is going to work all in all. One update that has gotten a lot of people talking is the addition of nicknames. As spotted by Wabetainfo, this would work in DMs and would involve you being able to set a nickname for someone that you are chatting with. This is obviously exactly what we have seen with Messenger, Facebook’s messaging platform, and it’s not the only feature that Instagram DMs are getting that are similar to what we have been seeing for so long with Messenger.
Another feature is rather small but still significant. Here we are talking about the stream of hearts that you are going to see if you love react to a message that you have gotten on the platform. This is a nice little feature that adds a bit more personality to the social media platform, and once again is taken from a feature that Messenger users have been taking advantage of for quite a long period of time so far and it has made a mark on the way this app tends to be utilized on a regular basis with all things having been taken into consideration.
These features are not yet available for users on a widespread scale but it is only a matter of time before they are rolled out to the wider user base that people are quickly becoming a part of.
Instagram is not the only app that Facebook is trying to turn into another iteration of its product line. A new change might just be coming to WhatsApp as well according to beta tests that are being seen at present. While this change isn’t a big one either, it definitely indicates a shift towards a unified aesthetic that would apply to pretty much every single platform that Facebook currently owns at this point in time. According to Ahmed Ghanem and Matt Navarra, WhatsApp is working on a redesigned Search menu to make searching process a bit more easier.
Users are definitely going to have a strong reaction to a sudden change, so it makes sense that Facebook is rolling these changes out ever so slowly, and that it is starting with Instagram because the changes are going to go over a lot better on that platform all in all. Changes to WhatsApp are a tricky matter because people often don’t want to be reminded that it’s owned by Facebook, so the impact will be interesting to see.
Read next: Instagram Is Planning To Give Users More Control Over “Close Friends” List
Some updates that are coming to Instagram might just make it easier to understand the various ways in which something like this is going to work all in all. One update that has gotten a lot of people talking is the addition of nicknames. As spotted by Wabetainfo, this would work in DMs and would involve you being able to set a nickname for someone that you are chatting with. This is obviously exactly what we have seen with Messenger, Facebook’s messaging platform, and it’s not the only feature that Instagram DMs are getting that are similar to what we have been seeing for so long with Messenger.
Another feature is rather small but still significant. Here we are talking about the stream of hearts that you are going to see if you love react to a message that you have gotten on the platform. This is a nice little feature that adds a bit more personality to the social media platform, and once again is taken from a feature that Messenger users have been taking advantage of for quite a long period of time so far and it has made a mark on the way this app tends to be utilized on a regular basis with all things having been taken into consideration.
These features are not yet available for users on a widespread scale but it is only a matter of time before they are rolled out to the wider user base that people are quickly becoming a part of.
Instagram is not the only app that Facebook is trying to turn into another iteration of its product line. A new change might just be coming to WhatsApp as well according to beta tests that are being seen at present. While this change isn’t a big one either, it definitely indicates a shift towards a unified aesthetic that would apply to pretty much every single platform that Facebook currently owns at this point in time. According to Ahmed Ghanem and Matt Navarra, WhatsApp is working on a redesigned Search menu to make searching process a bit more easier.
Users are definitely going to have a strong reaction to a sudden change, so it makes sense that Facebook is rolling these changes out ever so slowly, and that it is starting with Instagram because the changes are going to go over a lot better on that platform all in all. Changes to WhatsApp are a tricky matter because people often don’t want to be reminded that it’s owned by Facebook, so the impact will be interesting to see.
Read next: Instagram Is Planning To Give Users More Control Over “Close Friends” List
