Facebook-owned Instagram ramped up the pressure on Snapchat on Monday, adding ephemeral live video broadcasts and vanishing direct messages.
“Send anything you want, from inside jokes to your worst selfies,” Instagram said in a blog post.
“Unlike other messages in Direct, these photos and videos disappear from your friends’ inboxes after they have seen them.”
The updates appeared aimed at getting people to use Instagram more for casual, quirky moments instead of seeing it as a platform for sharing life highlights or polished posts meant to linger.
“Now, you can send disappearing photos and videos directly to groups and individual friends in a spontaneous, pressure-free way,” Instagram said.
The option to broadcast live on Instagram follows in the footsteps of a Facebook Live feature, and is a challenge to Twitter real-time video streaming service Periscope.
“Send anything you want, from inside jokes to your worst selfies. Unlike other messages in Direct, these photos and videos disappear from your friends’ inboxes after they have seen them”