Facebook Might Unbundle Instagram Messaging

Just when it seemed like Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) was slowly walking back from its unbundling strategy, the world's largest social network may be looking to unbundle a significant service. Except we're not talking about Facebook directly: The company is testing out unbundling messages in Instagram. The new stand-alone app for Instagram messaging is called Direct, and is launching today in a handful of smaller markets (Chile, Israel, Italy, Portugal, Turkey, and Uruguay). Facebook often tests new ideas in smaller markets to gather data, before potentially rolling out changes to its larger, core markets.

Instagram believes that messaging experiences are best delivered via a stand-alone app instead of within a larger app, mostly echoing CEO Mark Zuckerberg's sentiments from a few years back that "there's a big premium on creating single-purpose, first-class experiences" in mobile. Instagram direct messaging now has 375 million monthly active users (MAUs), according to The Verge.

Image source: Instagram.

Source: Fool.com