Instagram is getting an option same as Messenger to display whether friends are currently online and available to chat. Instagram will now display a green dot next to the profile picture of a person’s contacts to indicate if they are currently online and it will show up in the Direct Inbox, or while sharing a post from the feed. Additionally, Facebook has rolled out a new feature that syncs all contacts from your Instagram account with Messenger. The new move seems to be a bid to improve cross-app integration between Facebook, Messenger and Instagram. The company confirmed the feature to TechCrunch and we have also seen the same option on our devices.
As for the new green dot, “DMing friends and connecting over the content you love is more fun when you know your friends are there to see it. This update gives you the ability to have more of those real-time conversations while giving you the control to hide your status altogether.” says Instagram. The dot will appear on the bottom right corner of profile pictures of users who are online and using the Instagram app. One will only see it for people that follow them or people they’ve already talked to in Direct Messaging. Users can also turn the feature off to hide their own status from the settings, along with the ability to see when others are active.
Coming back to the contact sync feature for Messaging, one can opt-in for syncing the contacts by connecting their Instagram accounts with Messenger. This can be done from the 'People tab' at the bottom or navigating to the ‘People’ option in Messenger’s settings, however, if you’ve already used Instagram or Facebook account to sign-in to Messenger, it will automatically sync your contacts with Instagram, even if you don’t want to. Those who don’t want to sync their contacts will have to disconnect their Instagram account with Messenger by heading over to the People tab from Messenger’s settings.