

Being the first part of our website to be written in purely functional components with React hooks, which was a newer paradigm at the time.Some of the technical achievements included: The messaging experience was one of the first new product areas we had added in a while and was architected in a way that would allow its independent usage with or without the rest of the website. Part II a): Engineering, from hack project to testingīefore Instagram Direct messaging (also referred to as simply Messaging) was developed for the desktop web experience, it started off as an offering for the mobile web experience. Not only it enabled casual use cases, such as messaging from your computer while performing various other tasks, it also created new use cases geared towards power users, such as the ability to use a large screen and keyboard to reply to hundreds of messages. Messaging was a natural fit and one of the most requested features to develop for the desktop web interface based on our user research. Taking into account these findings, we have focused on building products that can enhance the user experience throughout the Instagram ecosystem, including web interfaces. In fact, it’s quite the opposite - users who use both interfaces spend more time on each interface, compared to users who use each interface exclusively. This analysis also demonstrates how important the desktop web experience is for Instagram business accounts, who often use their personal computers throughout their workdays.įurthermore, we haven’t found any evidence that the Instagram desktop web experience cannibalizes engagement from the native apps. This pattern is consistent with our user interviews that consistently demonstrate that users want to take small breaks while performing tasks for school or work. For example, we observe a complementary usage pattern throughout the day and week, with an increased usage of the desktop website during weekdays and daytime hours (6am – 2pm), while the native apps see an increased usage during evening hours (5pm-7pm) and weekends.

One benefit that the desktop web experience adds to the native apps is that it enables a complementary relationship that leads to an enhanced user engagement. For Instagram, the desktop web experience is the main alternative to native apps, and we have done a lot of qualitative and quantitative work around what use cases it can solve for our users. But as a service matures, both in terms of the number of users it has as well as in terms of the use cases it serves, it’s important to expand our understanding of how new interfaces can add value to the user experience.
#INSTAGRAM LIVE DESKTOP DOWNLOAD#
In fact, for the first few years of its life, Instagram was a mobile- only experience, with the website redirecting users to download the app. We believe that these learnings can be applied to other services to improve user experiences across all of their interfaces. In this post, we go through some of our overall learnings from our desktop users, and dive into the engineering and experimentation that enabled us to ship this product.

We believe that this feature will improve everyday experiences and enable new use cases for all of our desktop web users. In 2020 we launched Instagram Messaging (referred to in this post simply as “Messaging”) for personal desktop computers.
