<p>If you were engaged in something worthwhile on Thursday rather than paying attention to technology blogs, you might have missed the fact that photo-sharing app Instagramnow a subsidiary of social behemoth Facebook (FB)launched a new feature the company calls Instagram Direct, as Om predicted it would several weeks ago. The new feature essentially turns Instagram into a messaging app, allowing users to send the equivalent of direct messages to friends along with a picture or video.</p><p>This feature obviously pits Instagram against a horde of other messaging apps and micro-social networks, including Twitter (TWTR)which just launched a new photo-enhanced direct-messaging feature of its ownas well as Snapchat, Kik, WhatsApp, and Facebook's own branded messenger service. It's getting so smartphone users could probably fill up an entire screen with just apps that involve photo-sharing and/or messaging of some kind.</p><p>Everyone seems to want to be "the e-mail of chat," or the one ring that rules them all, as The Lord of the Rings put it. But is such a thing even possible? I don't think so. And even if it is possible, I would argue that by the time it actually occurs, the entire market will have become so commoditized that there will be no point in owning it.</p><p>This is not the first time we have seen this particular movie: Anyone old enough to remember Windows 95 can probably recall the cumbersome and Balkanized environment we had in desktop messaging at one pointwith AOL's (AOL) Instant Messenger, Microsoft's (MSFT) MSN Messenger, and numerous wannabe one-ring apps like ICQ (which inadvertently helped spark a technology startup boom in Israel). It got so you had to run three apps just to stay in touch with everyone you wanted to chat with on different platforms.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-12-13/facebook-cant-expect-a-messaging-monopoly">Keep reading...</a></p><p>Read also:</p><p><a href="http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/11/will-instagrams-messaging-moments-be-ephemeral/">Will Instagram's Messaging 'Moments' Be Ephemeral?</a> (TechCrunch)</p><p><a href="http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/12/instagram-introduces-private-messaging/?hpw&rref=technology">Instagram Introduces Private Messaging</a> (New York Times (blog))</p><p><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/instagram-direct-photoapp-launches-direct-messaging-to-counter-snapchat-and-whatsapp-9001302.html">Instagram Direct: photo-app launches direct messaging to counter Snapchat and ...</a> (The Independent)</p><p>Explore: <a href="http://news.google.com/news/more?ncl=dwwzF0_pg9jUKCM8H3Z6oljVPD0hM&ned=us">683 additional articles.</a></p>