News: Instagram adds voice messages to DMs

Instagram is the social media platform with the highest engagement rates in the western world. The instagram ecosystem has substantially evolved in the last 24 months. The addition of “stories” and “quick polls” have catapulted the number of messages that are being sent back and forth with the app.

The Facebook company, knows that messaging is one of its key features. Individual messaging and sharing thoughts through the app feels natural to them. Direct messaging, is one of the easiest ways for Insta to raise the time spend within the app. Within the western world, people spend more than two whole hours per day on social media.

The messaging battle

But the question is where they spend this time. The battle for attention and retention is serious and important to the survival of the social media eco systems. Instagrams biggest competitor, is not just snapchat or facebook, but it might very well be WhatsApp.

Whatsapp has tried to push story features as well, but failed to gain the acceptance of its users as a social media platform, so far. It’s reputation as a messaging platform have made it difficult for them to be seen as more than an alternative to SMS/MMS. Herein lays a big opportunity for Instagram. They are looking to gain ground on WhatsApp when it comes to direct messaging.

Instagrams community is large enough to serve as a single platform for image- and video-sharing. Next to that, it can become the primary communication tool for many. Especially the generation of users between 18-30 years old are established- and fond users of the app.

What’s next?

We’ll need to see what is up next for instagram. However, I believe it won’t be long until group video chats and calls will also be added. Insta has had quite a run so far and needs to “close” its community quickly now. The opportunity is there to establish a closed insta-society, who use instagram and nothing else, as their primary communication tool.