Instagram now allows optional photo and video message replays

Instagram has tweaked a couple of its direct messaging features to make them a bit more flexible and interactive. You can now automatically capture and remix photos sent to you in replies back to friends, and allow photo and video replays to be replayed more than once.

The remix feature lets you capture the original photo message and incorporate it into your reply, complete with the option to “remix” it with added stickers, text and doodles. You can also resize the image and incorporate it into your own visual response – meaning if you’re truly dedicated you could create a never-ending chain of remixed responses that drives you totally insane from its incomprehensible unknowability.

The other big change, and possibly one that’s more impactful IMO, is that Instagram now lets you choose to allow replays on photo messages sent to friends, instead of having them expire permanently once viewed. That’s a super cool feature, and a great option to have.

The single view expiry was a bit of a holdover from similar features Instagram was emulating from Snapchat, but I think the option to replay is much more at home on the photo sharing social network. You still have the option to fade away after a one-time view, too, so people can be as ephemeral, or as semi-permanent as they want to be.