Extra audio features are so 2021
We know Instagram became a social media giant by letting people easily share photographs and videos. But it looks like even this visually-oriented platform isn’t immune to the lure of social audio tools like Twitter Spaces, Facebook Live Audio Rooms, or Clubhouse. You can already send voice notes via Instagram DMs, but an interesting discovery by Alessandro Paluzzi — a developer who reverse engineers apps to find upcoming new features — makes it look like more Instagram audio might be on the way.
Saturday, Paluzzi shared a screenshot from Instagram Stories with a microphone icon in the field for story replies and stated outright that Insta “is working on the ability to reply to Stories with voice messages.” This comes a couple of months after he noted that the Meta-owned site was working on an edit grid feature.
Of course, at this point, there are plenty of unknowns — developers will sometimes prepare for upcoming features that ultimately don’t get implemented. It may also be that comparing this feature (if it does get added) to social audio like Spaces or Clubhouse is inaccurate. If anything, it seems more Snapchat-like, as you can also reply to stories on that site with voice messaging.
Even if Story reply by audio arrives and is derivative of Snapchat, it could still be a big hit with users, adding a new, perhaps more personal dimension to the way Instagram Stories works. There is no info beyond what Paluzzi has discovered yet, so it’s anyone’s guess as to when Instagram will roll out this feature. We’ll keep an eye out for upcoming updates.
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