Instagram Direct has been the only way to privately share images and have conversations on the Facebook-owned picture-based social network for a couple of years now. The thing is, every time you want to share a new image privately, you have to start a new thread - even if you want to share something with another user you're already actively having a conversation with.

Today's update brings about a pretty big shift in the way Direct works, as it will be much more dynamic moving forward. Direct messages will now work as threaded, in-line conversations (you know, the way they should be), and new images can be quickly and easily added on-the-fly.

But that's not the only thing IG is adding this go; images from your feed can now be shared in message threads, thanks to a new quick sharing link just below the image.

That, of course, brings about privacy concerns for a few users. Thankfully, Instagram is already ahead of the game here and has addressed just that in its official blog. The long and short of it is this, though: if your IG profile is private, all shared images will also stay that way - the person they are shared with will also have to follow your account before the image is visible.

Now if we could just get native "re-gramming."

[EMBED_VIMEO]https://vimeo.com/137644108[/EMBED_VIMEO]

This update is rolling out in version 7.5 of Instagram, which should be available starting today on both iOS and Android.

Source: Instagram; Instagram Blog