Ever closer to also being an instant messaging platform, Instagram introduces voice messages within Direct. How they work
Even on Instagram, voice messages are coming: they will be integrated into Direct chat, on par with what has already been happening for some time on Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. The three instant messaging applications of the Facebook group, therefore, are increasingly aligned in the features they offer to users.
The voice messages will arrive already with the next version of the social-photographic property of Mark Zuckerberg, both in its version for iPhone and Android smartphones. At the moment, voice messages on Instagram have been introduced in the U.S. version of Instagram, while in the coming weeks it should be deployed in the rest of the world, including Italy.
How to send voice messages on Instagram
To use voice messages on Instagram Direct users will just have to hold down the microphone icon (bottom right, next to the icon for sharing photos) for as long as it takes to record it, exactly as they already do on other apps. The maximum duration provided for messages is one minute, and you'll be able to send them to either a single user or a group chat. Finally, messages will not have an "expiration date" but will remain recorded within the chat in which they were sent. This new feature will be useful if we have our hands full, we are moving around or we don't have the time or way to write a text message. And, above all, it represents a more intimate alternative to writing, something that will certainly be appreciated by users who already on other platforms have shown that they really like voice messages.
Assault on voice
Facebook has been courting the voice market for a long time: its first voice messaging service dates back to 2013, while lately Mark Zuckerberg's company seems to have revitalized the "Aloha" project: a dictation system for messages that could be the antechamber of a real entry of the Social Blue into the voice assistant market. Project "M", a voice virtual assistant integrated only in Messenger, has instead been officially abandoned since the beginning of 2018.
One thing that is certain, however, is the demographic issue: today Instagram is the social with the youngest audience of the whole group and it is precisely the young people who seem to be the greatest admirers of voice messages. Sooner or later, then, this feature had to land on Instagram and so it did. In the meantime, Facebook seems to have abandoned the idea of diversifying the functions available on its messaging services, standardizing the different products and simply letting the user choose which one he prefers to use, all features being equal.