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Instagram is Killing its Standalone Messaging App ‘Direct’ Only After Two years of its Inception

instagram direct app
Image Source: marketingland.com

Facebook is going forward on the way to integrating most of its apps, and after its announcement of bringing chat back to the Facebook app, the company is now planning to kill the Instagram’s standalone Direct app.

Instagram revealed that by the next month, it will pull off the support for its direct messaging app. But the Instagrammers doesn’t have to worry about their messages, as the platform will migrate all the messages from the Direct app to the Instagram app DMs.

With the launch of Direct app in 2017, Facebook and Instagram both were up to adding new features and making it a standalone messaging app to stand against rivals like Snapchat. Similar to the Snapchat app, the Direct app opens with a camera. In fact, after logging in to the Direct app, the DM feature also disappears from the Instagram app.

But as a step of Facebook in the way of consolidating all its major apps, now Direct will have to face a young death. Instead, all the features it possesses will be merged into the DM feature of Instagram.

The company has already stopped providing updates to both the versions of the app. The latest update that the Android app had received was in April, whereas the iOS app had received the latest update in December last year.

The users have been receiving messages from the company about the closure of the app, upon which, a Direct user Matt Navarra, posted a tweet in a thread, saying, “Confirmed: Instagram is killing its standalone Direct Messaging app.” Upon which Instagram also posted a tweet, “Your conversations will automatically move over to Instagram, so you don’t need to do anything.”

Shutting down the Direct app might not be a big deal for either company as the app has failed in gaining as many users as Instagram has. In fact, the Instagram app’s DM feature has been a source of business promotion for many, and it is way more popular than Direct app despite having lesser features than the Direct app.