Facebook has been eyeing an integration of all its messaging platforms for quite some time now, and has made some pretty tall promises to its users. Today, it looks like the company is finally ready to take its first step towards a unified chatting approach, with the Verge being the first to notice an update window popping up on the Instagram app. As a part of this update, the company will offer an integration of chats on Instagram and Messenger.
The update promises a big revamp of Instagram’s DM service, which has not seen any major innovation off late. While chat apps around the world have introduced many new features, Instagram users are still stuck with the ‘like’ reaction for messages. However, this new update will bring colourful chats, a new emoji reaction system and swipe to reply to the platform. While these are all pretty substantial updates to the app’s banal chatting system, the biggest one is certainly “chat with friends who use Facebook.”
Now, the company will allow users to chat with Facebook friends directly from the Instagram app, a first step towards a unified chatting system. While, this feature is not accessible yet, the new ‘Messenger icon,’ which has replaced the older DM icon on Instagram, signals that users can probably get rid of the Messenger app pretty soon.
Other features promised in the update-colourful chats, emoji reactions and swipe to reply are already available for use. The Verge even goes on to note that shifting blue and purple tone (as you scroll through a sender’s messages) does make the chatting experience quite colourful. However, we have not been able to access the update as of yet, and will update you about our experience with it as soon as we can.
