As Wong states in one of the tweets shown above, Instagram Direct on desktop closely resembles the Facebook Messenger experience on desktop.
Perhaps motivated by the popularity of Facebook Messenger, Instagram is making efforts to have its platform seen as more of a destination for direct messaging.
Just last week, Instagram introduced Threads, which is a standalone messaging app for communicating with your closest Instagram friends.
According to another leak from Jane Manchun Wong, Instagram is adopting another Messenger-like feature in the form of a “Shared” section which is a collection of all media shared in a particular chat.