A social media app needs to be constantly upgrading to stay in the race, and that is what Instagram is doing. Now a new Instagram feature is giving users a new way to reply to direct messages.
What is the new Instagram feature?
Instagram users now have the option to reply to shared Direct posts using images and videos of their own. A new reply button with a camera icon will now be visible. The button opens the camera with a “sticker” of what a user is replying to. You will also be able to move it around the screen, resize it and rotate it.
“Now you can reply with a photo or video to specific photos, videos, and reshared posts in Direct. Your reply will automatically include a sticker of what you’re replying to. Just hit “reply” to open the camera, take a selfie, and send,” Instagram said in a blog post.
Users can also tap the sticker to do a split-screen with the original photo filling the top portion of the screen. For the bottom half of the photo, you can take a selfie. The feature is quite similar to the one in Frontback which allows users to take a photo of whatever they have in front of them and then take a photo of their reaction in a selfie, notes TechCrunch.
A good thing about this new Instagram feature is that it is not limited to just direct messages. The reply mode comes in handy even when watching a story, allowing a user to send a text by pressing the text field at the bottom of the screen. Users can also send a photo/video reply using the camera icon at the bottom left of the screen.
You will need to download version 10.34 to get the new Instagram feature.
Organize comments into threads
Also recently, Instagram rolled out another update to organize comments into threads, similar to how it is done in Facebook. Now, when replying to a comment, the Facebook-owned app will start a new thread, making it easier to follow conversations. At launch, the feature was only available in the U.S., but according to the company, it will be made available globally in the “coming weeks.”
When announcing the said feature, the photo sharing app said that the latest change will make “your feed an even better place to share interests, get inspired and connect with others.”
Even though Instagram is ahead of rival apps, the latest updates show the company’s intent to continuously improve its app. Such features are also helping Instagram add more and more users. When Facebook last reported its quarterly earnings, Instagram was reported to have 700 million users, including 375 million for its direct messaging feature and 250 million for Stories.
Even though the photo-sharing app is seeing impressive growth, it is not at the same level as Facebook’s News Feed. During the earnings call last month, CFO David Wehner noted that ads on videos and Instagram do not have the same impression growth that investors are used to seeing from Facebook’s News Feed ads.
“These products do not monetize at the same level as the News Feed,” Wehner said.
