Zuckenberg: We’re starting to roll out these new features on Instagram and Messenger in a few countries today

Today we’re announcing an update to Instagram DMs that will bring the best features from Messenger and create a better experience for messaging across both apps. We’ve been working on this since I shared our vision for a privacy-focused social network early last year. Private messaging is one of the fastest-growing forms of communication, and on Facebook’s apps alone people send over 100 billion messages every day.

We’ve heard from people that your conversations get fragmented across different apps, and it’s not always easy to know where to reach someone or where to find a certain chat thread. So we’re connecting the Messenger and Instagram experience so you can easily connect with the people you want across apps. This means that you’ll now be able to use Instagram to send messages and calls to friends and family on Messenger, and vice versa. You’ll have controls over how people can message you across networks, or to not receive these messages at all.