Instagram Has A New Messaging App? Wait... what?

Instagram has been rolling out their new companion messaging app recently, and it's called Threads. But what exactly is its purpose? In a move to try and... make more people message each other? The new app Threads works specifically with your close friends list, so you control who can see what. This app also comes with an interesting and possibly controversial feature, Auto Status. Auto Status (if kept on all the time) slowly learns your habits and will automatically create a status update that is visible to your close friends. There's no exact location sharing similar to Snapchat and its map, but it does raise some questions as to how much you want Instagram (and by extension, Facebook) to know about your day to day life.

Personally, I have all location settings on all my apps set to "Only allow while using the app" that way I know there's no sneaky background tracking going on while I'm driving around. However you can set your own updates while the always on tracking is turned off, and this might be the go to for the people who use it. However I think I'm going to try what Instagram thinks I'm doing with the always on feature turned on and I'll revisit that after I've tested it more... so you're not followed by Facebook spies updating your status every hour. I gotchu.

Now when using the camera, which is the first thing that you see when you open the app, much like Snapchat, the photos and videos you take will still go to Instagram. Remember this is a companion app, one that's meant to take over your messages section of Instagram. I can't really say yet if this app is going to make it easier for you to message your friends, because it's already so easy on Instagram. Only time will tell if this app survives or not.

I'm genuinely curious to see how many people use Threads, because it does seem kind of pointless to create a messaging app for your platform that already includes messaging? But again this app is tailored for your close friends list, so if you don't want randoms sliding in your dm's after you post a selfie, this might be a solution to that, because that selfie you posted on Threads is only visible to your close friends list.

(Cool little side note: Threads has 5 different themes to chose from that will change the color of the entire UI... BUT... and this is the coolest part of the entire app honestly forget everything I just wrote... IT CHANGES THE COLOR OF THE APP ITSELF ON YOUR HOMESCREEN! so cool breh)