Meta's Threads is finally letting you slide into DMs.
Users can now send each other private messages right on the platform, a feature that has taken nearly two years to arrive.
Threads launched in 2023 as a fast follow-up to Elon Musk's chaotic Twitter takeover and copied nearly every feature from its rival except, arguably, the most important one: direct messages.
When Threads first launched, there was no separate inbox. If you wanted to message someone, the app would kick you over to Instagram even if you didn't follow that person there.
The assumption at the time, according to Instagram chief Adam Mosseri, was that users would have overlapping social circles across both platforms, making a separate messaging system unnecessary.
That didn't exactly pan out. As Threads matured, Meta noticed that users were connecting with a different crowd on the platform than the accounts they followed on Instagram. In fact, Meta said, more than a third of daily Threads users now follow mostly different accounts on the app than they do on Instagram.
"We originally thought that people would largely port over their Instagram connections and the same graphs to Threads," said Emily Dalton Smith, head of product for Threads, in an interview with Business Insider.
"We've seen increasingly, really over the past year, that people are building new connections on Threads and that they're building out an interest graph that looks different from their Instagram graph."
That shift in behavior — and relentless user demand — finally pushed Meta to build DMs directly into Threads. "It's been our number one most requested feature since we launched two years ago," Smith said. "We've been working on it for a while."
Threads has also been steadily growing. In April, the app hit 350 million monthly active users, a notable milestone for a platform that was met with early skepticism as just another Twitter clone.
Private messaging has quietly become the main event on social media over the last few years. Increasingly, people are choosing to have more conversations in group chats — iMessage, Instagram DMs, WhatsApp, and Messenger. Up to now, Threads had been the odd one out in Meta's lineup.
The global rollout of DMs follows several weeks of testing in Hong Kong, Thailand, and Argentina, where Smith said usage outperformed expectations and was more in line with a "mature social app" than a new one.
For now, you can message people who follow you on Threads or are mutual followers from Instagram in an inbox that lives inside the Threads app. Also notable: the messages aren't encrypted, and Smith told BI that Threads has no plans to add encryption anytime soon.
In the future, you'll be able to let people who don't follow you on Threads or Instagram DM you, and also start group chats.
Could layering private messaging onto a platform built around public conversation change the vibe? Smith doesn't think so.
"I think it will actually be additive," she said. "It'll be part of helping the app become a major stand-alone social app. We see a lot of what happens in the comments is amazing, but then sometimes, [people] want to take it further and have a real chat."
Meanwhile, if you've got thoughts about Threads — or anything else going on at Meta — you can now send an (unencrypted) DM to this reporter. For something a little more secure, Signal is still your best bet. Hit him up at +1408-905-9124.
