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 typically complain about is the dearth of direct messaging skills. 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 permit new messages to be initiated from the Threads app. The function has begun for some Threads customers, who report seeing a “message” button atop different customers’ profiles the place the “point out” function was. A Meta spokesperson confirmed the change, saying the corporate was “testing the flexibility to ship a message from Threads to Instagram.”

Of notice, Threads nonetheless doesn’t have its personal inbox, and it’s not clear if it ever will. Instagram head Adam Mosseri has mentioned a number of instances that he doesn’t need to create a for Threads, however “make the Instagram inbox work” within the app. A Meta spokesperson additional confirmed that “this isn’t a check of DMs on Threads.”

However though it’s not a full-fledged DM function, the flexibility to ship a message from the Threads app with out having to change to Instagram might no less than make messaging from Threads rather less clunky. Really checking or replying to these messages, although, will nonetheless require customers to go to the Instagram app.

Which will nonetheless look like a wholly pointless step, however Mosseri has identified that constructing two variations of the identical inbox might simply get difficult. “If, in the long run, 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 mates with the identical handles in two completely different apps,” he wrote in in November. “Neither appears nice.”