 "Instagram Direct now allows users to send images and videos to friends privately")
Private messaging is the new black. Instagram, jumping onto the bandwagon, now brings in Instagram Direct, a new way to send photo and video messages to family and friends using the service.
At an event in New York City yesterday, the service announced Instagram Direct, a feature that is available for Android and iOS versions of the application. You will be able to use it to send and receive private text messages as well as photo and videos. However, there is more to the service.
Send videos and images to your friends
Clicking and posting images on Instagram will work in two ways now – one where you can make it visible to all your followers, called “broadcast” and the other is privately messaging a person or group of people. “From how you capture photos and videos to the way you start conversations through likes and comments, we built Instagram Direct to feel natural to the Instagram experience you already know,” wrote Instagram in a blog post, announcing the feature.
Explaining the rationale behind giving importance to communication modes, Kevin Systrom during the announcement event said, “Communication is not about photography, necessarily. If we were about photography we’d be built into cameras, but we’re not, we’re built into phones.”
Now when you open up your Instagram app, you will find a new “inbox” button on the top right corner of your home feed. Using this tab, you can check out messages your friends have sent you. It will include all the images and videos sent to you. If you receive a message from someone you’re not following, it will be sent to the requests tab. After your friends have privately viewed the pictures, they can still like and comment on them.
To send an image to a friend privately, you need to go about clicking a picture or recording a video like you normally do and add effects. As you’re finishing up, Instagram will ask you whether you want to share it with “followers” or send it as a “direct” message. You can choose multiple people to send the image to using direct.
Instagram Direct is already available within the Instagram update for iOS and Android. Head on to Google Play to download Instagram for Android and to the App Store to download Instagram for iOS. The blog also announces that since its Windows Phone version of the app is in beta, it isn’t getting Instagram Direct just yet.
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