While most of the stuff that you post on Instagram is for public (or at least your public) consumption, there are still some things that you’d just want to share directly to your friends. That’s why the Direct feature of the photo sharing app is pretty useful for those times. Now Instagram is updating and enhancing that section of the app to make it easier for you to not just share or reshare photos in your threads, but also to add fun, disappearing photos and videos.
When you swipe left onto the Direct section, you will now see a blue camera at the bottom, which is a cue for you to take a silly picture or video, edit it, add text, stickers, emoticons, etc, then send it directly to a friend or a group of friends. You can also find the blue camera on your existing conversations and the same procedure applies. You will be able to see who has viewed your message or silly selfie within the thread.
If someone sends you a disappearing message, it will be highlighted blue and after you view them, you can replay them one more time. The sender will receive a notification if you’ve replayed the message and if you screenshot it as well (so no secret screenshotting here). All the messages, reshares, and disappearing messages will all be seen in just one thread for your individual conversations or group chats.
Some people have been accusing Instagram (and Facebook for that matter) of slowly becoming like Snapchat. But for non Snapchat users who are enjoying these seemingly Snapchat-like features, that doesn’t really matter as long as they’re having “fun, visual conversations”.
SOURCE: Instagram
