Facebook’s promised push to make social media more meaningful and intimate shows up in Instagram’s latest endeavor: a fast photo-messaging app for close friends. And the app may hit two birds with one snap, as it also seems to move more into Snapchat’s turf.
Unveiled Thursday, the new Threads companion app opens directly into the camera, just as Snapchat does, so Instagram users can quickly send photos and videos to specific individuals. It also allows people to set an emoji as a status or rely on the system to pick a status automatically based on location, movement or battery level.
Instagram already has a messaging feature baked into its main app, but the difference appears to be the intended audience.
“Over the last few years, we’ve introduced several new ways to share visually on Instagram and connect with people you care about — from sharing everyday moments on Stories to visual messages on Direct,” Robby Stein, Instagram’s director of product, wrote in the company’s blog. “But for your smaller circle of friends, we saw the need to stay more connected throughout the day, so you can communicate what you’re doing and how you’re feeling through photos and videos. That’s why we built Threads,
Unveiled Thursday, the new Threads companion app opens directly into the camera, just as Snapchat does, so Instagram users can quickly send photos and videos to specific individuals. It also allows people to set an emoji as a status or rely on the system to pick a status automatically based on location, movement or battery level.
Instagram already has a messaging feature baked into its main app, but the difference appears to be the intended audience.
“Over the last few years, we’ve introduced several new ways to share visually on Instagram and connect with people you care about — from sharing everyday moments on Stories to visual messages on Direct,” Robby Stein, Instagram’s director of product, wrote in the company’s blog. “But for your smaller circle of friends, we saw the need to stay more connected throughout the day, so you can communicate what you’re doing and how you’re feeling through photos and videos. That’s why we built Threads,