The Facebook-owned app, Instagram, is going to finally end the use of its standalone Direct Messaging app and lay it off very soon meaning you won’t be able to slide into your friend DMs whenever you want via the Direct Messaging app.
Direct, originally unveiled as the camera-first app in December 2017 had a significant resemblance to the famous camera-centric app Snapchat. The app was first launched in a handful of countries- including Chile, Israel, Portugal, Turkey, and Uruguay- as a test. At that time it said-
“We want Instagram to be a place for all of your moments, and private sharing with close friends is a big part of that. To make it easier and more fun for people to connect in this way, we are beginning to test Direct – a camera-first app that connects seamlessly back to Instagram.”
However, the app never gained as much popularity as expected by the developers which is why it mostly remained in beta-version which might be the reason that some of you readers may not even have heard of this app before. Since then Instagram added various features to the messaging app including Giphy GIFs and even a web version for your desktop but unfortunately couldn’t draw a lot of users while other apps like Messenger were becoming more popular day by day.
The news for the demise of the Direct Messaging app was first reported by Matt Navarra, a Social Media consultant, and few reviewers on the application’s Google Play Page at the moment they got a notification that said, “In the coming month, we’ll no longer be supporting the Direct app, your conversations will automatically move over to Instagram so you don’t need to do anything.”
Instagram didn’t give any particular reason behind their decision to let go Direct. It might be because the company thought that any more effort made on Direct is wasting resource but of what we understand depressingly low usage ultimately killed off Direct.