Instagram Simplifies DMs for Creators Getting Bombarded

Instagram upgrades its DMs to improve the experience for creators and influencers getting bombarded by incoming messages.

Instagram announced a big update to its direct messages inbox on Friday, November 1, focused on improving the experience for creators and influencers who receive a lot of inbound messages. The app is introducing tools to allow users to sort and filter their message requests (those that don't arrive in their main inbox), based on user-set controls.

Users will be able to sort and filter message requests by follower count, verified accounts, brands, creators, and more. The idea is to help the creator better identify higher-priority messages that may require more of their time to respond due to the impact they might have on the creator's business and relationships. A new “Story Replies” folder will also be added to make them easily accessible and in one place.

The Meta-owned company said the changes are being rolled out after lots of feedback from creators across the world who found managing their DMs to be a terrible chore.

“Now, when you go to the requests inbox, sometimes it can be really overwhelming,” said Instagram's Adam Mosseri in a post on the platform. “So what we've done is added ways to filter down those requests to just see the ones that you're looking for.”

“There's a lot more to do to improve the inbox for creators and requests,” he continued. “But hopefully, this is one step in the right direction.”

Users can access the “Sort & Filter” options in an overlay on top of their inbox, where they can choose to sort requests by most recent or by the number of followers the sender has. From there, they can check or uncheck other options to further narrow down the scope of what they want to see in their inbox.

These changes come on the heels of other inbox-focused filtering improvements made by Meta this week in its platform WhatsApp.