Instagram has announced its latest feature: Join chat, the new Instagram sticker that allows your followers to join a private conversation through stories.

Instagram in Dark Social Media?

By uploading a story to your Instagram account and adding the Join Chat sticker, you’ll receive a notification when one of your followers wants to join your group chat. If you accept a follower’s request to join the group, you’ll be able to add them as a chat contributor or a chat member.

Due to the popularity of private messaging within social media platforms, it comes as no surprise that Instagram would want to facilitate and encourage this option by making it more interactive and direct.

Instagram isn’t the only platform that is looking to offer this possibility. Snapchat is also developing a very similar characteristic where the objective is to create group chats instantly.

The messaging trend in apps like Instagram and Snapchat are aiming themselves towards privacy or “darkness”.  Both teams are looking to impulse and capitalize from this by making messaging more interactive.

This is an important step to take, specifically for Instagram, since more than half of its users use Direct Messaging within the application. If we think about our digital habits on Instagram, we often find ourselves sending the same message individually to our group of friends.

Instagram’s strategy is to make the app an essential tool to communicate with your followers on social media – a simple way in which you can find out the latest about people you know. If you’re a brand, the goal is to utilize the platform in a unique way to form connections with your audience, and therefor create a solid follower base and community.

Source: www.theverge.com