One of the key “missing” things that people frequently lament about on Threads, which now has over 130 million users, is the inability to send direct messages. However, a new way to message other Threads users may soon be available to individuals who aren’t receiving DMs.
Initiating new messages from the Threads app, Meta is beginning to test messaging services that rely on Instagram’s inbox. Some Threads users report seeing a “message” button above other users’ profiles where the “mention” option used to be. This indicates that the feature has started to appear. A representative for Meta verified the modification and stated that the business was “testing the ability to send a message from Threads to Instagram.”
Notably, Threads does not now have its own inbox and it is unclear when it will. Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, has stated on numerous occasions that he would like to “make the Instagram inbox work” within the app rather than establish a separate inbox for Threads. “This is not a test of DMs on Threads,” a Meta representative added.
The option to send a message from the Threads app without needing to open Instagram should at least make messaging from Threads a bit less awkward, even though it’s not a full-fledged direct message feature. Users will still need to open the Instagram app in order to actually view or respond to those messages.
That may still seem like an entirely unnecessary step, but Mosseri has pointed out that building two versions of the same inbox could easily get complicated. “If, in the end, we can’t make the Instagram inbox work for Threads, we’ll have a hard choice to make between (1) mirroring the Instagram inbox in Threads and dealing with notification routing weirdness, and (2) building a totally separate Threads inbox and dealing with the fact that you’ll have two redundant message threads with each of your friends with the same handles in two different apps,” he wrote in a post in November. “Neither seems great.”
