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From China’s Sina Weibo to Facebook-owned Instagram and Facebook itself, social networking apps are getting more and more “Snapchaty” these days.
Starting on Thursday, Instagram is running a test trial for a messaging app Direct, derived from Instagram’s direct message feature, in Chile, Israel, Italy, Portugal, Turkey, and Uruguay.
If you download the app, the Direct feature will be removed from your Instagram and can only be accessed in the new messaging app. The company hasn’t set a timeline to permanently remove the messaging feature from Instagram yet.
Despite the fact that people often ignore the messages they receive on Instagram, the company told The Verge that Direct has “grown” within Instagram over the past four years and they want to make it stands out on its own as a “camera-first, standalone app”
Instagram explained the move as they want Instagram to be a place to “all your moments,” and “private sharing with close friends is an important part of that”
The interface of the new Direct app is much like Snapchat. The app opens to a camera. By swiping left, users can go to the profile and settings page, and right to their inbox.
Interface comparison between Snapchat and Direct.
Instagram’s owner Facebook has gone through a similar process of splitting its messaging feature from the main app since 2014. The company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the time that one app can “only doing one thing well” but later wanted Facebook to be everything, so much so that new users of the app started getting confused.
Instagram has gradually lost its uniqueness since the acquisition when Facebook is eager to follow the “camera-first” trend and win over young millennials.
The square shape photo sharing platform has become a social networking app where people share photos, .gifs and videos in various forms with their friends and strangers. When it rebranded in 2016 with new logos and interface people did not react well. It is hard to predict if this time users will be happy with the new Direct app when it functions like an extra Snapchat.
(CGTN)
