On the surface, Threads is essentially an extension of Instagram’s Close Friends feature for Stories, which was introduced in 2018. Close Friends, in case you’re not familiar with it, lets you share pictures, videos and message only with groups of people you’ve carefully selected. In fact, if you haven’t created a Close Friends list on Instagram, you’ll need to do that the first time you fire up Threads in order to use it. I did not have a Close Friends list, but creating one was fairly easy: you just go through the list of people you’re following and choose whomever you want to add.

That step is important because you can only share things with people on that list in Threads. You can send things to all of them at once, or to individual people, but they have to be on that list. For the most part, I picked people I know in real life, since those are the ones I’m most likely to have meaningful, private conversations with. Once you have your list ready, Threads will ask if you want to create shortcuts for up to eight of your closest Close Friends. This puts their profile picture next to the camera shutter button for quick access. (I sort of I wish I had in the main Instagram app.)

Instagram has billed Threads as a “camera-first” app (it’s coming for you again, Snapchat), so right when you open it you go straight into camera mode. Like on Instagram, you can tap the shutter once to take a picture or hold it to record a video. My main instinct after taking a picture was to swipe to add an effect or filter, but you can’t do that in Threads. There’s no word on whether that staple of Instagram will be coming in the future. For now, all you can do to your photos or video is add text or scribble on them.

From the camera view, the main interface consists of a shutter button, shortcuts and Home. The latter is where you can instantly get a view of all your direct messages, as well as create groups and change settings, including status (more on that shortly), shortcuts and themes. For example, you can choose between dark and light modes for your app.

No matter where you are in Threads though, whether it be Home or your direct messages, you always have easy access to the camera and Close Friends shortcuts. And in your DMs, you can view people’s Instagram Stories, but if you want to view their entire profile the app will redirect you to Instagram. That’s understandable since Threads is intended to be a messaging app, not another way to browse and like your friends’ pictures.

Twitter is continuing its streak of releasing features it teased in August. The internet giant is rolling out its previously-tested direct message search to iOS users. You only have to type in a search box to recall the restaurant you were supposed to visit. Keywords apply to user names, informal names and the content of messages, so it should be easy to narrow DMs to those from a close friend.

The expansion comes as part of a wider effort to curb abuse that includes reply moderation. It won’t stop some of the worst offenders, such as those who intend to carry out threats whether or not you read their DMs. It should, however, give you a way to leave your message inbox open to people you don’t follow without giving creeps an easy way to make your life miserable.

YouTube didn’t elaborate on why it decided to retire the feature, but it said it’s going to focus on beefing up the site’s comments section. “We’re constantly reevaluating our priorities and have decided to discontinue YouTube’s native direct messaging feature while we focus on improving public conversations,” the page reads. We hope that means we can look forward to better moderation features and tools for YouTube comments in the future.

YouTube says you’ll still be able to share videos straight from the website by clicking the “social network icon.” If you’re on desktop, though, you can always just copy-paste links into your messaging app of choice.

There are a couple more minor but welcome additions in development. Twitter is working on the option to support Live Photos from iOS devices as GIFs in case you want your snapshots to be that much livelier. You’ll also have the freedom to reorder photos in the app after you’ve uploaded them. You won’t have to worry about botching an event tweet by posting the photos out of sequence, to put it another way.

The company has good reason to turn its attention to DMs after spending so much time on public-facing features. Remember, Mark Zuckerberg outlined plans for a privacy-focused Facebook with more emphasis on chats and other “simple, intimate” spaces. If Twitter wants to lure people away from those spaces, it has to make DMs more compelling than they are today.

Instagram is introducing a new feature that will let users start private group messages around specific Stories. The company announced the change on Twitter today. Users will soon be able to add a “join chat” sticker to their Stories. If followers tap the sticker, they’ll be added to a private group chat — though the author will have the ability to approve or deny requests.

Confirmed: Instagram is killing its standalone Direct Messaging app pic.twitter.com/owt2gXtfCE

— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) May 16, 2019

The Facebook-owned platform first launched Direct in a handful of countries December 2017. Since then, it rolled out a bunch of features, including Giphy GIFs, and even a web version for your desktop. The app never became quite as popular as the main application, though, and it never got to roll out to most regions. It remained in beta — and we wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve never even heard of it before.

It’s not clear if the platform is killing the standalone app because it never truly gained traction, if it’s not worth the effort anymore seeing as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are both a lot more popular, or if it there’s another reason behind the decision. We’ve reached out to Instagram for confirmation and will update this post when we hear back.