Part of Facebook’s strategy over the course of the past few years has involved trying to ensure that each of the platforms it owns have something new to offer to people, something that would keep its myriad users invested in what said platforms have to offer. Instagram has been a powerful tool for Facebook in this regard, so it will come to so surprise to people that visual-based social media platform is about to get some pretty big updates that will enable the platform to reach whole new levels not to mention make it easier for it to stay relevant and things start to change more and more rapidly as time goes by.
One of the changes that is coming has to do with something that Twitter worked on recently as well. While Twitter is not exactly a rival to Instagram per se, the feature that the platform recently added is one that Facebook first started using, so it was only a matter of time before Instagram incorporated it into its own user interface as well so as to make the user experience much more intuitive and enjoyable for the average Instagram user.
We are, of course, talking about emoji based reactions to DMs. Direct messaging has become a big part of Instagram much like with every other social media platform and reactions serve to customize this experience for each individual user. Right now users can only use the heart reaction but they are about to get a lot more such as a laughing emoji, a surprised emoji, an angry one as well as thumbs up and down emoji to round them off. The feature, as spotted by Jane Manchun Wong, is currently only available for a small set of users but since Facebook has been working on them for some months now it is likely that it we might end up seeing this update soon.
This new feature also hints at the future of Facebook’s disparate messaging services. It now seems more likely than ever that Facebook will offer a unified messaging experience to people, one that would cater to WhatsApp, Messenger as well as Instagram users.
The second big development that Instagram is working on is about its Progressive Web App (PWA). The move from web based browsing to Web Apps that are downloaded onto your computer and are accessible outside of a browser based setting is something that we have been seeing all across the industry, so it was inevitable that the biggest social media platforms active in the world today are going to end up focusing on PWA to attract more PC users. According to Windowsblogitalia, Instagram has finally added Direct Messages for its desktop users.
Read next: Study: 51 Percent Of Consumers Said They Have Called Out a Company On Social Media
One of the changes that is coming has to do with something that Twitter worked on recently as well. While Twitter is not exactly a rival to Instagram per se, the feature that the platform recently added is one that Facebook first started using, so it was only a matter of time before Instagram incorporated it into its own user interface as well so as to make the user experience much more intuitive and enjoyable for the average Instagram user.
We are, of course, talking about emoji based reactions to DMs. Direct messaging has become a big part of Instagram much like with every other social media platform and reactions serve to customize this experience for each individual user. Right now users can only use the heart reaction but they are about to get a lot more such as a laughing emoji, a surprised emoji, an angry one as well as thumbs up and down emoji to round them off. The feature, as spotted by Jane Manchun Wong, is currently only available for a small set of users but since Facebook has been working on them for some months now it is likely that it we might end up seeing this update soon.
Instagram is working on Reactions for Direct Messages— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) January 30, 2020
Currently, “non-employees can only see the ❤️ reaction”
Facebook’s Tech Comms Manager @alexvoica confirmed this unreleased feature and this is “something they’ve been testing for a few days” pic.twitter.com/EzVWfA6Doo
This new feature also hints at the future of Facebook’s disparate messaging services. It now seems more likely than ever that Facebook will offer a unified messaging experience to people, one that would cater to WhatsApp, Messenger as well as Instagram users.
The second big development that Instagram is working on is about its Progressive Web App (PWA). The move from web based browsing to Web Apps that are downloaded onto your computer and are accessible outside of a browser based setting is something that we have been seeing all across the industry, so it was inevitable that the biggest social media platforms active in the world today are going to end up focusing on PWA to attract more PC users. According to Windowsblogitalia, Instagram has finally added Direct Messages for its desktop users.
Read next: Study: 51 Percent Of Consumers Said They Have Called Out a Company On Social Media
