Instagram is developing a new product, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), which will allow people to start conversations with business or designer accounts by tapping on a common question in a chat. Those who already have the feature available report that they can create a set of four questions that can optionally be displayed at the start of a conversation with other users.
The feature can be useful for businesses that often respond to customer inquiries about their products or services, or for creators who receive a number of inbound requests from fans or brands interested in collaborations, for example.
The product introduction highlights how much the Instagram messaging platform now overlaps with Facebook Messenger, following the recent launch of the new Instagram messaging experience. In September, Facebook announced Instagram users would have the option to switch to a new inbox
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which now offers a host of Messenger-inspired features, such as the ability to change the color of your chat, react with any emoji, make messages disappear, etc. The update also introduced cross-app communication between the Instagram and Messenger platforms.
With these changes, it looks like Facebook is leading the way in making the Instagram messaging experience more comparable to Messenger.
Today, the Messenger application offers a similar FAQ option for Facebook page owners in the Automatic replies section of Messenger settings. Here, page owners or admins can set up a series of frequently asked questions and their answers to those questions that can be presented at the start of conversations with their page, as this new Instagram feature offers.
Instagram’s FAQ option had been spotted earlier this year while I was on development, but that seemed to only affect business accounts, according to the app code.
However, new reports and screenshots from an Instagram user with access to the feature indicate that the FAQ will be available for creator accounts as well as businesses.
The feature was discovered by a social media consultant on Monday. Matt Navarra, who accredited @thenezvm for the new discovery.
Since @thenezvm now has access to the feature, as previously credited screenshots show, the FAQ option might be early in testing or starting to roll out more widely.
However, this is probably the first, as Instagram declined to comment or provide details, when Heaven32 requested more information.