Almost two years after launching Threads, Meta is lastly giving in to customers on some of the requested options for the service: direct messaging. The corporate is starting to check a devoted inbox for Threads, starting with Hong Kong, Argentina and Thailand, Mark Zuckerberg revealed in a post on Threads.
Threads has had some messaging capabilities since final 12 months, however the function solely permits customers to ship Threads posts to associates through their Instagram DMs. That is greater than a bit clunky because it requires switching forwards and backwards between apps. It is also been the supply of some confusion — at the least amongst my associates — as a result of it means that you can ship Threads posts to contacts on Instagram even after they do not have a corresponding Threads account. For me, this implies I generally ship a put up to a pal on Instagram just for them to inform me they cannot view it correctly as a result of they do not use the app.
For sure, all this has been removed from superb. And, unsurprisingly, DMs have been a extremely requested function from Threads customers. However Meta executives — and Instagram head Adam Mosseri specifically — have been inexplicably skeptical of the function. Mosseri said last year that he needed to “make the Instagram inbox work” for Threads relatively than construct out a separate messaging feature for the app.
That is lastly altering, although. Meta is starting its preliminary exams of a Threads-specific inbox this week. The function will solely help 1:1 chats — at the least for now — so it should nonetheless be rather more restricted than what’s accessible on Instagram and even X. It would additionally solely be accessible in a few international locations to start out, although Meta says it plans to broaden to extra areas “quickly.”
