San Francisco, – Instagram announced today that it will eliminate Direct, the application focused on sending photos and videos as direct messages to Snapchat-style contacts and that was launched in 2017 precisely to attract some of the users who were opting for that alternative.
It was a message in the application itself that alerted users that “in the next month” will not continue “giving support” to Direct and that all conversations that are active in it will be automatically transferred to Instagram.
The measure is part of the strategy of Facebook (owner of Instagram and, therefore, of Direct) to move towards a convergence of all its services in a single platform, exposed by the CEO of the firm, Mark Zuckerberg, in its most recent public appearances.
Direct went on the market in December of 2017 as an application “daughter” of Instagram that practically “copied” the function and style of Snapchat, then very popular among the youngest ones, that allowed to apply filters in a simple and fast way to the images and Share them in ephemeral and private messages with other users.
The application was originally released in Uruguay, Chile, Turkey, Italy, Portugal and Israel and later expanded to other places, although Facebook has not provided data on the number of countries where it is currently available.
On March 6 and after a 2018 in which scandals on Facebook were almost constant, Zuckerberg promised to convert the social network into a “communication platform focused on privacy” taking as reference the popular WhatsApp messaging application, also of his property.
On that occasion, the co-founder of the social network explained that people “are increasingly interested in connecting with others privately in what would be the digital equivalent of a room.”
In addition, he revealed that Facebook has seen in recent years how private messages, ephemeral publications (Snapchat-like) and activity within small groups in the social network are the areas of greatest growth in online interactions. (EFEUSA) .
