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Instagram has just announced the arrival of a new feature to its Android and iOS applications. The company has started rolling out voice messages to Instagram Direct, which will essentially give you a way to send voice messages to your contacts. Once this feature hits the app that is installed on your phone, all you have to do is open a conversation with a contact you’d like to send a voice message to, tap and hold the mic icon in order to begin recording your voice, and release that icon once you’re done, after which the message will be sent automatically. This actually functions similar to voice messages on other services, such as (Facebook) Messenger and WhatsApp, to name a few. Some of you will probably make a mistake while recording your message, and will not want to send it. Well, in that case, all you need to do is keep holding your finger on that mic icon, and move it to the delete icon, which will delete the message without sending it. Now, there’s also an option to record a hands-free message, in case you’re somewhat busy at the moment. In order to do that, you need to open a conversation, tap and hold the mic icon in order to begin recording a message, and swipe to the unlock icon, after which you will be able to release your finger, but continue recording your message. If you’d like to send that message, you need to tap the send icon, or you can tap the delete icon in order to delete it.
Background: Instagram has seen quite a few changes this year, mostly in form of new features that have rolled out to the application. Last month, the company has added wishlist and some other features to its shopping discovery tools, and by doing that, they’ve made shopping a more enjoyable experience, of course, as wishlists are a must-have feature for that sort of thing. On top of that, back in October, Instagram started rolling out two-factor authentication to its application, on both Android and iOS. Many people think that two-factor authentication should be an option on pretty much every app out there, and it works really well on Instagram, as you’d expect. These are only some features that have been added to the app in the last two months, more changes occurred earlier this year.
Impact: Instagram has basically started off as a platform for sharing images via your account, and conversing with people who leave comments on those images. Over time, Instagram grew to be much more than that, as plenty of additional features came to the app. The all-new voice messages feature will certainly be welcomed by some, but many people will see it as an unnecessary addition, as Instagram is not supposed to be a full-fledged messaging application or anything of the sort, and yet it’s constantly receiving features that are pushing it in that direction, little-by-little. It remains to be seen what will the company’s next step be, but we’ll hardly see any more notable features being rolled out before the end of the year.