The experience of accidentally sending an e-mail or message, either in error or anger, is a familiar one. But what makes Instagram Direct different is that the sender remains in control of the existence of the photo even after it’s been sent. This makes an Instagram Direct inbox seem, in sum, closer to a Facebook photo album. Unlike Snapchat, however, Instagram attempts to encourage the permanence of the photo by generating a comment thread below it, as with photos posted to a user’s Instagram feed. Instagram then generates a visualization of the recipients underneath the photo and shows when each has viewed the photo, as well as if they’ve “liked” it. Instagram Direct mimics some of the functionality of Snapchat for photo-sending: users snap a picture, select up to 15 recipients from a list of people they follow, and send the photo off. Like Instagram video before it, it seemed like a me-too add-on to compete with another, almost completely dissimilar content sharing app, one that happened to have spurned Instagram’s own owner.īut the announcement failed to make mention of an Instagram Direct feature that makes it strangely competitive with Snapchat’s ephemeral messaging (and in a way, even better): senders can delete sent photos directly from their recipients' phones, at any time, even while a recipient is viewing it. The surface read of Instagram’s announcement of a messaging-like feature today was a bit underwhelming. Enlarge / The Instagram Direct interface, which allows you to share photos directly to a subset of those you follow, rather than to all your followers.

Instagram read receipts