Meta is testing messaging capabilities for Threads, however don’t name them DMs

As Threads has grown to greater than 130 million customers, one of many main remaining “lacking” options customers usually complain about is the shortage of direct messaging talents. However these lacking out on DMs could quickly have a brand new choice to message different Threads customers.

Meta is beginning messaging options that depend on Instagram’s inbox however enable new messages to be initiated from the Threads app. The characteristic has begun for some Threads customers, who report seeing a “message” button atop different customers’ profiles the place the “point out” characteristic was. A Meta spokesperson confirmed the change, saying the corporate was “testing the flexibility to ship a message from Threads to Instagram.”

Of be aware, Threads nonetheless doesn’t have its personal inbox, and it’s not clear if it ever will. Instagram head Adam Mosseri has stated a number of occasions that he doesn’t wish to create a for Threads, however “make the Instagram inbox work” within the app. A Meta spokesperson additional confirmed that “this isn’t a take a look at of DMs on Threads.”

However regardless that it’s not a full-fledged DM characteristic, the flexibility to ship a message from the Threads app with out having to modify to Instagram might at the very least make messaging from Threads rather less clunky. Truly checking or replying to these messages, although, will nonetheless require customers to go to the Instagram app.

Which will nonetheless appear to be a wholly pointless step, however Mosseri has identified that constructing two variations of the identical inbox might simply get sophisticated. “If, ultimately, we are able to’t make the Instagram inbox work for Threads, we’ll have a tough option to make between (1) mirroring the Instagram inbox in Threads and coping with notification routing weirdness, and (2) constructing a completely separate Threads inbox and coping with the truth that you’ll have two redundant message threads with every of your pals with the identical handles in two completely different apps,” he wrote in in November. “Neither appears nice.”