Instagram has killed its standalone messaging app even before most people had a chance to use it. The app was first released in 2017. However, it never made it to the mainstream. The new messaging app, known as “Direct”, made an announcement that it will be closing in June 2019.

A lot of people had never heard of the Instagram messaging app because it had not fully taken off. It launched in Israel, Portugal, Turkey, Italy, Uruguay and Chile in 2017. An Instagram spokesperson said that Instagram’s direct message feature was growing and they thought it could stand alone like Facebook Messenger.

The messaging app worked like Snapchat where users could share videos and photos of themselves and write messages. When you install the app, the regular direct inbox on Instagram will disappear, and messages will now be accessed via Direct.

Facebook privacy and protection

This comes as Facebook starts working on tightening up the back-ends of Whatsapp, Insta DM and Facebook Messenger to bring the products even closer. This is in line with Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to improve end-to-end encryption and make Facebook more private.

In other news, Instagram’s executives have had to sit before a British Parliament committee after news broke that a 16-year-old girl died by suicide after posting a poll on the app. The Malaysian girl had asked if she should live or die. Police say the girl killed herself after 69% of responses on the poll chose death.

Instagram’s head of product, Vishal Shah, commented on the sad event. He said, “The news is certainly very shocking and deeply saddening, and our thoughts and prayers go out to the family of the young woman in Malaysia.”

Instagram has been very critical of its suicide and self-harm policy since the death of a 14-year-old girl in the UK in February. They discovered that she had been engaging with many Instagram accounts that had images of suicide and self-harm. The platform took steps immediately to ban all graphic images of self-harm afterwards.