DirectMessaging
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Instagram experiments with a standalone messaging app
It happened to Facebook, and now it's happening to Instagram. Today, the Zuckerberg empire is launching a standalone messaging app for Instagram called Direct. As The Verge reports, it's technically a test and will only be available in six markets — Chile, Israel, Italy, Portugal, Turkey and Uruguay. Like Messenger, the Direct app effectively cuts the Instagram experience in half; your Inbox lives in Direct, while the regular feed remains in the Instagram app. If you want to keep tabs on both, you'll have to shuffle back and forth. It sounds like both apps will have a built-in camera, however.
Twitter DM buttons let brands help (or sell to) users
If you open a Messaging window with Focus Features' account on Twitter, you'll get greeted by a menu with a few choices to pick from. Those are the platform's new Direct Messaging Buttons, which you can click to perform tasks outside the DM window. A company could bundle a button with a coupon it sends you via DM to give you an easy way to tweet it out to your followers. Some could include buttons that take you to their profiles or to their websites in an effort to lure you into following their accounts or trying out their products. Others can program a button to open a chat conversation with another account more suited to answer your questions for a better customer service experience.
Twitter tests custom profiles for customer service DMs
Twitter has truly fully embraced its role as a customer service platform for businesses around the globe. One of the features it's testing in private beta, for instance, is designed to give companies a way to make direct messages a lot more personal. The feature allows businesses to add custom profiles for their CS reps, which display their names, profile photos and their job titles within the direct messaging window. Twitter says that knowing if a human is replying or not helps people manage their expectations on what kind of responses they'll get.
