Instagram’s DM’s simply received a significant makeover. The overhaul, which provides seven new options to reinforce the platform’s messaging performance, comes amid a broader reimagining of Instagram away from picture sharing and towards super-app standing.

Among the options announced on Thursday is the power for customers to share 30 second Spotify music previews in messages, ship messages silently, create polls in group messages, and simply see who’s on-line. The overhauls will even let customers reply to messages whereas nonetheless shopping of their feed, which suggests all you doom scrollers on the market won’t ever should avert your gaze from no matter horrible calamity or focused advert could also be vying to your consideration! The new silent function, against this, will let extra thoughtful customers ship messages to individuals with no doubtlessly annoying notification by including an @silent tag to their DM.

The options received’t essentially apply to everybody although. In a statement despatched to TechCrunch, Instagram stated the music sharing, chat themes, and quick-send options will solely work for customers who’ve opted-in to an upgraded model of messaging introduced again in 2020 that permits cross speaking between Instagram and Messenger. Today’s adjustments arrive every week after the app reintroduced its chronological feed that lets customers see posts in reverse chronological order with barely much less algorithmic shenanigans occurring.

Instagram’s “No Longer a Photo-Sharing App”

Though the messaging tweaks may seem minor and incremental (and certain, they’re) they’re additionally half of a bigger philosophical shift by the corporate to beef-up Instagram’s total app capabilities. Last yr, Instagram head Adam Mosseri released a video on the platform the place he proclaimed Instagram was “no longer a photo-sharing app.” In the video, Mosseri outlined the corporate’s plans to reinforce the app’s presence in video, e-commerce, messaging (cough cough), and on-line creator relationships.

“How people connect with their close friends has changed a lot over the past five years or so and it’s moved primarily to messaging, away from Feed and Stories,” Mosseri stated. “The number one reason that people say they use Instagram in research is to be entertained.”

That pivot to spice up Instagram’s presence as a sort of all-in-one tremendous app comes amid turbulent instances for the Big Blue Facebook app.

Earlier this yr, Facebook reported its first quarterly decline in each day energetic customers within the firm’s historical past, an element pushed partially by its abysmal efficiency amongst younger customers. Instagram, conversely is extra enticing amongst younger customers, although it’s going through its personal issues as effectively. The adjustments additionally come as customers flock to opponents like TikTok who’ve managed to solidify their presence in short-form video. Mosseri hinted on the strain from TikTok in his assertion.

“Let’s be honest, there’s some really serious competition right now,” Mosseri stated. “TikTok is huge, YouTube is even bigger and there’s lots of other upstarts as well.”

There’s one main communication space Instagram has spent much less time emphasizing: Voice messaging. Instagram added the function again in 2018 although it hasn’t appeared to take off in the identical means in a few of Meta’s different apps. Just this week, for instance, WhatsApp revealed customers on its platform ship out a whopping 7 billion voice messages day-after-day.