Instagram does photos on mobile better than anyone else. They also recently added video to that mix, but it doesn’t look like Instagram is going to stop there: rumor has it they are getting into messaging next as well.
Over at GigaOm, Om Malik says that “well-placed sourced” claim that new private messaging features will come to Instagram by the end of the year, and may include group messaging.
Why does Instagram need messaging, though? Malik explains:
It is fundamentally my belief that most applications need a layer of communication — comments and lightweight signals such as Facebook’s likes are part of that layer. And so is messaging. The web (and Internet in general) is getting closer to being synchronous, and alive, a concept I had described in my essay, The Alive Web.
I’m not sure I agree: although I suppose it’s good to have a way of getting in touch with Instagram followers you don’t know from other networks, this seems like standard feature creep.What do you think? Would you use Instagram messaging? Let us know in the comments.
Source: GigaOM
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
2 responses to “Instagram’s Next Update Could Include Messaging”
John, I don’t think it’s feature creep. If anything, it may be responding to how some are already using the app. As someone who works around social apps for a living, I was surprised to learn a few months back at how my (then elementary school-age) daughter and her friends were using Instagram. Few organic photos and more sharing of images found online, followed by lots of comments and “chat-like” interaction in those comments. I started to say “no, no, no, you’re using it all wrong,” before realizing that however they want to use the app is the right way for them. So I see this making sense, and if messaging is private, potentially a way to try and take away some of the reason to move on to something like Snapchat….
John, your articles always seem to have so many typos and grammatical errors. C’mon man!