Last week we reported that Instagram may be bringing private messaging to the popular photo-sharing app, possibly by the end of the year. Now, we may also be getting something a little more.
New rumors around the big update is that the company plans to intorduce email to all of its users. An anonymous source cited by TechCrunch has revealed that a select group of users have been given @Instagram.com email addresses, which may be the beginning of a much bigger roll out. The source is allegedly an ecommerce marketing professional, who discovered the email addresses while collecting data for a third-party company that gathers social networking information. The source said that during her past data collections, she has never seen these Instagram email addresses pop up before. “We requested verified email addresses for the followers of a certain fan club on Twitter and received back these results,” she said. “We use [the data provider] as a tool for gathering information, and suddenly A LOT of the email fields were being filled in with Instagram email addresses.”
This could easily be something internal that won't be released for the public, but considering that Facebook has already implemented @Facebook.com email addresses (which would be awkward to use in any instance outside of Facebook), Instagram email addresses would be feasible for the company to construct, and wouldn't hurt since its user base is growing steadily. Also, it would make sense to introduce a private messaging service along with email, to make the experience feel more whole. Hey, the last reports were that this update was going to come by the end of the year, and we're officially into December, so we'll find out soon.
[via TechCrunch]
