News from Facebook! Updated Functionality in Messenger and Instagram Direct.

Major changes: new topics, the ability to reply to a message using a photo or video, and others.

New features in Facebook Messenger
Chat archive
For the convenience of users, you can now clear your incoming messages without deleting chats or losing your chat history.

You can move the chat to the archive by swiping to the left. A purple button will appear, when clicked, the chat will be sent to the new Archived Chats folder.
You can go to this folder by clicking on your profile photo in the Messenger mobile application and selecting this item.

Record voice messages.
Simplification of recording voice messages. Now, instead of long pressing the microphone button, you can press it once to start recording, and with another press to stop.

This feature is currently only available on Messenger for now, but will soon appear on Instagram as well.

New Topics
Messenger users have more options to personalize their chats with new themes. Among them are Star Wars and Selena.
These themes are also available on Instagram Direct.

New features in Instagram Direct
Visual responses
This feature allows users to reply to messages using a photo or video. The new feature is currently only available on iOS, but will soon be available on Android.
Message read status
Users will now be able to see if their message has been read. The corresponding signature will appear under it.
This information was available before, but to view it, you had to open a chat. Now the status of the message will be displayed in the general list, it is much more convenient.