Instagram has launched a new app called Instants, a direct clone of Snapchat, currently in testing in Italy and Spain. The app allows sharing unedited photos and videos that self-destruct after 24 hours and can only be viewed once. Linked to Instagram accounts, it offers a low social pressure space, limiting editing to text to encourage authenticity under the motto real life, real quick. It is Meta's latest copy of services like Snapchat or BeReal, although their popularity has already declined.
How Meta's new ephemeral bet works 📸
Technically, Instants integrates with Instagram's infrastructure, using the same login and friend list. The app removes features like filters, effects, or retouching, leaving only the option to add text to captures. The content, once viewed or after 24 hours, is deleted from the servers without leaving a trace on the user's profile. Meta thus replicates Snapchat's model, but with a more austere approach: no permanent stories or visible metrics, seeking to reduce the pressure for visual perfection criticized on its main platform.
Meta reinvents the wheel... again 🔄
Meta once again demonstrates its talent for reinventing what others have already invented. If it was previously the turn of Stories, Reels, and the BeReal of the moment, now it's time to rescue Snapchat from the memory box. The idea is genuine: unfiltered photos that disappear. But watch out, in Italy and Spain they are already testing whether people want another app for the same thing Instagram does, but with fewer features. Because nothing says authenticity like launching a clone of a social network your parents have already stopped using.