The disappearing text, sometimes known as the self-destructing message or ‘ephemeral messaging’, has been part of Snapchat’s core functionality since the app launched in 2011. Finding appeal among millennials and those who wanted to send risqué texts to each other that could not be easily saved, the feature soon made its way to other messaging apps like Facebook’s Messenger and Instagram Direct.
Now, Instagram, with over one billion monthly active users, is testing out the same functionality except for entire chats. While Instagram already lets you send a single disappearing message at a time to other users, now the company wants to let you have entire conversations that disappear.
According to a TechCrunch report, Facebook has prototyped the new feature as a 🙊 mode, using the ‘speak no evil’ emoji. The functionality was discovered buried in Instagram’s code by Jane Manchun Wong.
Instagram is working on “🙊 mode” where messages disappear
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) March 19, 2020
It seems to be in an early barebone version but I tried my best to demonstrate how it might work pic.twitter.com/ZrUZZj0TWo
The feature would be enabled by swiping up from the Instagram Direct message thread, which take you to a dark mode window. Incidentally, Facebook messenger has a similar chat feature in the form of ‘Secret Messaging’ which lets you have encrypted conversations with the option to make each message disappear after a while.
Instagram have confirmed that the feature is in early development and not yet going through external testing. So, it may be a while before you get to try it out.
We're always exploring new features to improve your messaging experience. This feature is still in early development and not testing externally just yet!
— Instagram Comms (@InstagramComms) March 19, 2020
Facebook has had good success with copying Snapchat’s features. The Snapchat ‘stories’ format, which lets users make posts that last only for 24 hours at a time, was successfully implemented in Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp. Today, while Snapchat has under 300 million monthly active users worldwide, Facebook products are used by billions of people.