Introducing Instagram Direct

I'm guessing you're being facetious, but MMS (or whatever app-of-the-month it is) beats email by allowing you to view content inline and having better infrastructure (lower overhead for communication, richer data [so-and-so is typing]).

In my anecdotal experience apps beat out MMS because of carrier compatibility and poor service.

Does anybody know if they're planning on making this available via their third party API?

I've checked the current API docs [1] as well as the Google Group [2] and the StackOverflow Posts [3]. There's nothing mentioning it yet.

This would be an awesome feature to have available in third party apps, so that one could have it in other chat clients apart from the official iPhone app. Adium is one example, but there're probably even better solutions. After all, one of the most annoying things about WhatsApp is that I have to use my phone to answer messages or read messages. It just feels stupid to tap away on a small screen to send a digital message while I have a 27" screen and a full keyboard right in front of me. That is something where iMessage and Facebook messages are way better.

Also, there were, for quite some time, third party Instagram messaging solutions [4], and I'm really happy that they're finally implementing this straight into Instagram. Beforehand, you'd see people having discussions that were bordering on being private by continuously posting comments to an image. This happened all the time. Now these discussions can move into private space.

[1] http://instagram.com/developer/endpoints/

[2] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/instagram-api-develo...

[3] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/instagram/

[4] http://instamessage.net/

This will have a huge impact on Snapchat, IMO. Instagram Direct allows you to keep a conversation going with close friends, which is much more engaging and fun. Snapchat does not allow for that. One of the reasons that I'm not as prolific on Snapchat is that I just can't know what the hell I'm going to take a picture of next in response to someone's Snapchat. This addresses that issue by allowing just one picture to be the instigator for a conversation. Obviously loyal Snapchat fans will still stay there but I think the less prolific Snapchatters will opt to send a picture this way rather than thru Snapchat.

I think this will pretty substantively impact Snapchat's moderate to less prolific users. Most people don't NEED their pictures to self-destruct, they weren't that embarrassing in the first place. This however, allows for more fun engagement after the initial picture sending and once users get a feel for that, people would opt for this I believe.

Photostream is really the end game for what sharing photos should be. You serve it on space that you rent privately from Apple. You have comments, likes, and filters. You can post photos of any size. Your social network is not being analyzed because Apple is selling you the space (iCloud) and the device (iPhone).