Meta Brings its Inbox Notes to Messenger

This seems like not a big deal, but then again…

Today, Messenger has confirmed that it’s adding Notes, which is pretty much the same as Instagram’s inbox Notes feature, enabling you to post text-based prompts that all of your Messenger contacts can then see in the app, which could spark more conversation and interaction opportunities.

So now, in addition to your Stories appearing within that row of profile bubbles along the top of your Messenger inbox, users will also be able to add text notes, which they can then respond to in the app.

Which, as noted, seems like it’s probably not going to be a game-changer of any type. But then again, Notes has been something of a surprise hit on IG, especially among younger users, with Meta reporting back in June that over 100 million teens had shared a Note in the preceding three months, while teens are also creating Notes at 10x the rate of non-teen users.

The latter point being the real driver for Meta.

In recent years, both Facebook and Instagram have been losing relevance with younger audiences, so if there’s any new feature that even looks like it might be catching on with this cohort, Meta will be looking to double down on that, in the hopes of keeping more people posting to its apps, as opposed to drifting off to Snapchat or TikTok instead.

So while it may not be a big deal to older audiences, it could be relevant for youngsters. And if not, it seems like a relatively low-cost test, which will provide another connection option in the app, without a heap of dev time.

Messenger’s Notes feature is more limited than IG’s, in that you can’t add music, GIFs, videos, etc. Messenger Notes will, however, be displayed for 24 hours in-stream, providing a quick prompt (60 characters max) to get people talking, and it could be especially handy for random catch-ups when you head home for the holidays, providing an easy way to send a call out to all of your contacts.

Business Pages can’t, however, post Notes at present.

Which makes sense, as that would immediately flood your feed with promos from every account that you’ve ever DM’ed with. But it is a limitation worth noting with the new option.