Instagram today have revealed a brand new feature for their service called the Instagram Direct. Conceptually, it is similar to direct or private messaging on Twitter, Facebook and plenty of other online communication platform out there as Instagram Direct allows users to privately share images and videos with each other.
With the addition of the new feature, Instagram users will see a new option called “Direct” when they are about to share images or videos. Users are able to share the content with up to 15 other Instagram users. The display images of those recipients will then display a tick icon when they’ve viewed the shared contents and a heart icon once they liked it.
Unlike Twitter, users don’t have to follow each other to send posts using Instagram Direct. However, the post that users sent to someone that doesn’t follow them will be grouped into the person’s request queue. From there, the recipient is able to approve or discard the shared post.
The new Instagram feature is available right now through the new Instagram version 5.0 for iOS and Android. Unfortunately, Windows Phone users will have to wait for future updates – most likely once the WP8 app is out of beta.
[Source: Instagram, Instagram Help Centre]
