Instagram is a part of that empire and recently the company made a change, incorporating Direct Messaging (DMs) into the browser experience.
It's a relatively small change, but its significance is not lost on Influencers and online marketers who rely heavily on Instagram to stay in touch with business partners around the world. Essentially, the change makes Instagram's DMs just like any other online chat program, which makes communication easy, convenient and seamless.
Now that Instagram's DMs are available in the browser, it's just a matter of time before meta chat services that combine chat feeds from multiple sources incorporate Instagram DMs into the mix. That will enable you to access all your messages from a variety of sources from a single umbrella, which will streamline your communications further.
Messaging has of course been part of the internet experience since the earliest days of the web. Today's apps are increasingly sophisticated, sleek and streamlined. Based on the growth trajectory Mark Zuckerberg made reference to, the trend toward increasing reliance on messaging across social media platforms only stands to grow further and take on ever more importance.
If your company uses Instagram DMs to keep far-flung employees in touch with each other, or to communicate with business partners, rejoice. The new changes will make your life even easier. Be advised though, that at present, the new functionality is in Beta, and is only available to a tiny fraction of Instagram's user base. In the months ahead though, and pending successful testing, everyone will have access to it.