Instagram Code Reveals Planned Voice and Video Calling Features

Instagram is gearing up to compete against some of Snapchat‘s most popular features: voice and video calling.

According to a new report from TechCrunch, these hints of video and voice functionality come from a variety of image files in the Application Package (APK), which have titles such as “call.png,” “video_call.png,” and “action_call.png.”

It’s common for companies to have files like this ready in the wings before the new features actually get released, which implies Instagram’s messaging system will likely be gaining these additions sometime soon.

In the screenshot below, icons for both traditional “calls” along with “video calls” can be found, which TechCrunch believes the photo-sharing platform will implement into its Direct messaging system.

If Instagram does add video and voice chats, it would make it one step closer to Snapchat, which it quite mercilessly borrowed from in the past, with features such as Stories. In fact, besides the oddball UI, the only major feature that differentiates Snapchat from Instagram at this point are video calls.

Instagram already offers a number of different ways for its users to interact with one another, and last December, the company announced it was testing a standalone “Direct” app to put a greater emphasis on its direct messaging feature. Public photos and videos may be the highlight for Instagram, but it clearly wants to be much more than that.

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