Instagram is upgrading DMs with a focus on creators

Instagram on Friday announced an update to DMs, its direct message inbox, that will improve the experience for those who receive a lot of incoming messages, like creators and influencers. Now the app is introducing tools that allow users to sort and filter their “message requests” — meaning the messages that don’t arrive in their primary inbox — based on controls that the user sets.

The new tools will allow users to sort and filter these message requests by number of followers, verified accounts, brands, creators and other factors. This will help the creator better identify the higher priority messages that may deserve a response due to the impact they could have on the creator’s business and relationships.

Additionally, a new “Story Replies” folder will be added to make story replies available in one place.

The company said the changes are being introduced after hearing from creators around the world how it can be difficult to manage their DMs.

“Now when you go to the request inbox, sometimes it can be really overwhelming,” Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri said in a post on the social network. “So what we’ve done is added ways to filter those requests down to just see the ones you’re looking for,” he continued. “There’s a lot more to do to improve the inbox for creators and requests,” Mosseri admitted. “But hopefully this is a step in the right direction.”

The “Sort and Filter” options appear in an overlay on top of the inbox, where users can choose to sort requests by their most recent or by the number of followers the sender has, helping to highlight those messages that could be from other creators or brands , which reaches out about business deals. In addition, they can check or uncheck other options to further narrow what is shown by factors such as whether the account is verified, a business, a creator account, those who have a certain number of subscribers, and more.

Instagram says it will continue to invest in DMs over time.

The changes follow other inbox-related improvements Meta made earlier this week to WhatsApp, which now allows users to filter their chats by custom lists.