By 
Instagram is a platform that has really grown in popularity over the past few years and the owners, Facebook has been looking to cash-in on their Billion dollar investment.
To start it off, it has been revealed that Facebook ordered Instagram executives to double the number of ads that are shown on the platform. For now, Instagram shows ads on status, timeline and explore pages (which was added after pressure from Facebook).
Since the platform has limited areas to show ads and also has a limited type of ads it can display, the company has finally given in and will be displaying more ads to users. According to reports, the ads will possibly appear back to back across the status, timeline and explore pages.
Start off your week with tech news recap and trending conversations in your inbox
Already, a good number of users have been complaining of multiple ads on the platform but this did not deter Facebook from demanding more. Back in 2015 when Instagram first added ads to the platform, the revenue grew to $9 billion in 2018, this number has significantly grown and the image-sharing platform is expected to make $15.8 billion in revenue this year alone.
That’s not it, Instagram has been putting more effort into their e-commerce capabilities. The platform allows influencers and corporate accounts to tag purchasable items on their images, which allows users to buy said items by simply tapping on them, as they would tap on the name of someone who’s been tagged on an image.
At the moment, tapping on an item redirects you to the seller’s official page to checkout but reports indicate that Instagram is working on allowing users to checkout from within the app.
A New Way to Slide Into The DM
Besides ads, it has been reported that Instagram is working on a new messaging platform dubbed Threads. This will not be the company’s first rodeo at messaging, the first attempt, Direct was killed off before it could see the light of day.
Unlike Direct, which was to be a standalone messaging platform, Threads is meant to complement the current Direct Messaging feature within the app. Sources familiar with the matter claim that Threads will allow users to interact directly with their Close Friends, allowing them to send images, videos, locations information, speed of the car (if you’re in one), phone’s battery life and traditional texts to each other.
In essence, this is just another tab to only interact with your Close Friends list because aside from messages, the Close Friends’ statuses will also be viewable from within Threads.
The announcement of this new messaging platform is in line with Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of private messaging being the future. The only question now is whether users will interact with the platform better than they did with IGTV.
Comments