Instagram’s parent company Facebook has been trying its best to make it so that it would potentially be able to have a real monopoly over the direct messaging industry. With the acquisition of WhatsApp, the creation of Messenger as well as Instagram’s own Direct app which was meant to be a messaging app that people could use outside of Instagram in order to message people, Facebook successfully managed to create an entire ecosystem of messaging apps that could potentially prove to facilitate any form of instant messaging that people might have initially been interested in.
Direct was not the only messaging related app that was connected to Instagram. The platform also launched Threads which was a lot like Facebook and facilitated status updates as well as direct messaging with people that you had added to your close friends list on Instagram. It turns out that Instagram might just be starting merge both Direct and Threads into a single messaging app. This was first noted after the recent update to the Threads app that made it virtually indistinguishable from Direct in a lot of ways including both aesthetics as well as overall functionality.
This might be an attempt on both Facebook’s as well as Instagram’s parts to unify their messaging ecosystem in a way. While it is unlikely that all of the messaging apps under Facebook’s control would be consolidated, doing so would be enormously unpopular for WhatsApp users who tend to crave separation from Facebook’s overall ecosystem, it does seem likely that at the very least Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Threads might be added to the centralized control panel that Facebook is adding to its apps. This might help improve the user experience by making it more seamless, although some might question the decision to take away things that once made each of these apps pretty unique.
Read next: Instagram Rolls Out Labels for State Controlled Accounts
Direct was not the only messaging related app that was connected to Instagram. The platform also launched Threads which was a lot like Facebook and facilitated status updates as well as direct messaging with people that you had added to your close friends list on Instagram. It turns out that Instagram might just be starting merge both Direct and Threads into a single messaging app. This was first noted after the recent update to the Threads app that made it virtually indistinguishable from Direct in a lot of ways including both aesthetics as well as overall functionality.
This might be an attempt on both Facebook’s as well as Instagram’s parts to unify their messaging ecosystem in a way. While it is unlikely that all of the messaging apps under Facebook’s control would be consolidated, doing so would be enormously unpopular for WhatsApp users who tend to crave separation from Facebook’s overall ecosystem, it does seem likely that at the very least Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Threads might be added to the centralized control panel that Facebook is adding to its apps. This might help improve the user experience by making it more seamless, although some might question the decision to take away things that once made each of these apps pretty unique.
Instagram Threads app has basically become the Direct app reborn with the latest update that allows messages with anyone, not just close friends pic.twitter.com/5JwGDhlejd
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) October 6, 2020
Read next: Instagram Rolls Out Labels for State Controlled Accounts
