DMs may still come to Threads, but not how you expect

During Threads’ peak, you had 100 million potential friends that you could possibly message, but the platform never debuted that functionality. That’s a bummer, as people were making new acquaintances on the app. Being able to directly contact them would have been a plus. Well, Adam Mosseri, the CEO of Instagram, stated that DMs might come to Threads, but it might be through Instagram.

As you may know, Threads and Instagram are EXTREMELY close; Threads was basically built off of Instagram’s code, and this is why you weren’t allowed to delete your Threads account without deleting your Instagram account. That’s changing, thankfully. Anyway, we all expected that any DM system from Threads would be closely tied to Instagram’s messaging system. Judging by what Mosseri said, it looks like this will be the case.

DMs might be coming to Threads through Instagram

Mosseri talked about the company’s plan regarding DMs through a Threads post. This post was in response to a post from Casey Newton saying. In his response, Mosseri said that DMs are “possibly” coming. “My hope is that we can make the Instagram inbox work“, he said, “We just launched the ability to DM from Threads without app switching. We still need to make that easier, improve the receiving experience, and work through a more comprehensive set of messaging controls.”

So, it seems likely that the messaging experience will be powered by Instagram’s messaging platform. While that’s the case, Mosseri and the gang are at a bit of a crossroads. In a subsequent post, he said that there are two possible avenues that the company could pursue. Firstly, the company could unify the Instagram and Threads inboxes. So, you’ll be able to access both sets of messages from either app.

One challenge that Mosseri noted was in making sure that there wouldn’t be any “notification routing weirdness”. You don’t want to get double notifications for every message you get.

Secondly, the company could craft an inbox separately for Threads. That’s easier said than done based on how tightly integrated Threads is with Instagram. We’re not sure what option the company will choose or how long it will take. All we know is not to hold our breath. Threads came out attached at the hip to Instagram, and we don’t know if Mosseri had any part in that plan. This is still Meta’s baby

So, there are going to be challenges ahead for the Insta-Threads team. Let’s just hope that the company pulls this off.