Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri recently said that Threads would not be getting direct messaging anytime soon. Well, he may have spoken too soon on that one.
In a leaked internal document from Meta that was acquired by Business Insider, the company appears to be promising direct messaging as a “coming soon” feature for users on the platform. While the article itself is paywalled, social media analyst Matt Navarra took to Twitter to share one part of the document that — you guessed it — says that messaging is coming soon to the app.
It appears that popular creators on the app may have given the company enough feedback in order for them to prioritize DMs over other features that Mosseri and Zuckerberg have already promised. While the document from Instagram says that the feature is “coming soon,” the company did not give any sense of a timeline as to when it might show up on the platform.
In addition to messaging, the company said that trends and topics and improved search were also coming soon, something that Mosseri had already said publicly.
While Instagram might be making a big U-turn on bringing messaging to Threads, it’s probably a good one. While DMs can be problematic, it is a good way for people to take something off of public and into private conversation. Right now, people are having to jump to a different app to do so and are likely not always choosing Meta’s Messenger app. I’m sure that they’d like to fix that.
Messaging, trends, topics, and improved search aren’t the only things that are “coming soon” to Threads. The company has already promised a slew of other features, including support for multiple accounts, support for federated apps like Mastodon, a chronological feed of only people you follow, the ability to delete your Threads account without deleting Instagram, support for hashtags, and, of course, the ability to edit a post.
Excited?! Don’t get too excited too fast. There is absolutely no timeline on any of these features — externally, at least — just yet, so we may have a bit to wait until we get some of these in our hands.
Rather than wondering when features are coming, the question you should be really asking is, when will Threads get ads?