Instagram users can now reply 'Direct'ly to 'Stories'

In a bid to improve visual conversations among users through its messaging tool ‘Direct’, photo-sharing app Instagram has added the feature to reply to users’ ‘Stories’ with photos or videos. The replies would include a sticker of the original story that a user may move around and re-size. “Today’s update is just one of the ways we’re working to make ‘Direct’ the best place to have fun, visual conversations with friends on **Instagram** ,” the Facebook-owned app said in a statement. To reply with a photo or a video, a user must tap a new camera button that appears while watching a friend’s story.  When a friend replies to a user’s story with a photo or a video, it can be seen in the inbox. As with disappearing photos and videos in ‘Direct’, a user’s friends will know when he or she has taken a screenshot or replayed a reply. Stories’, a feature that lets users post photos and videos that vanish after 24 hours,  **was introduced in Instagram in 2016** , after it became famous on photo and video sharing platform Snapchat. Earlier, it had brought the multiple photo posts feature where it allowed multiple photo posts to be posted as an album on its app.