Instagram’s new chat sticker lets friends ask to get in on the conversation directly in Stories

Instagram has a new sticker type rolling out today that lets friends and followers instantly tap to start conversations from within Stories. The new sticker option, labelled “Chat,” will let anyone looking at a story request to join an Instagram group DM conversation tied to the post, with the original poster still getting the opportunity to actually approve the requests coming in from their friends and followers.

Instagram’s Direct Messages provide built-in one-to-one and one-to-many private messaging for users on the platform, and are one key way that the social network owned by Facebook has used to fend off, anticipate and adapt features from would-be competitor Snapchat. The company confirmed in May that it was discontinuing development of Direct, its own standalone app version of the Instagram DM feature, but its clearly still interested on iterating the core product to make it more engaging for users and better linked to Instagram’s other core sharing capabilities.