After launching its new Notes feature in selected regions last month, Instagram is now expanding Notes access, with users in Europe and Japan now also able to add Notes within the Direct inbox in the app.

Notes are short posts, up to 60 characters long, which are displayed at the top of your IG inbox for 24 hours. Your connections can see and respond to your Notes in the app, providing an easy way to spark conversation and engagement in-stream.

And as Instagram chief Adam Mosseri notes in the above clip, Notes have seen good take-up thus far, particularly among younger users, as they test out new ways to engage with friends, and share information across social channels.

The option is another effort from Instagram to lean into the fact that more people are now interacting in messages than they’re posting to their main feed.

Back in September, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained that:

“Most people use feeds to discover content and use messaging for deeper connections.”

Instagram chief Adam Mosseri has also said that more interactions are now happening within private channels, and given that this is where user engagement is shifting, Instagram’s keen to incorporate more ways to feed into this trend, in order to maximize engagement.

Notes provides another angle on this, while it also moves along similar lines to more immediate, intimate engagement popularized by BeReal, which looks to take social media back to its more ‘social’ roots.

Is it a big deal? Probably not, but it could be another way to spark engagement, and glean more insight into specific topics and trends.

Or it could just be a fun addition.

Notes is now available in all regions – or will be shortly.