Personalized Instagram messages may be underway for the photo-sharing service, TechCrunch reported.
The visual communication platform which was acquired by Facebook last year, sees messaging as a new way to expand its appeal to its 200 million (and growing) users.
TechCrunch said they received a list of @instagram.com email addresses from a source who works for an e-commerce company. She told TechCrunch she received the email addresses as a part of a request she made of one of the many companies out there that compiles data from social networking sites.
"We requested verified email addresses for the followers of a certain fan club on Twitter and received back these results," she wrote in an email to TechCrunch. "We use [the data provider] as a tool for gathering information, and suddenly a lot of the email fields were being filled in with Instagram email addresses."
Last week, GigaOm also reported that messaging may be in Instagram's near-future. It also reported that the photo-sharing site is also experimenting with the idea of group messaging and the features are likely to debut in the next version of Instagram which is expected before the end of the year.
Instagram's owner, Facebook, has built its own messaging service back in 2010.
"It is fundamentally my belief that most applications need a layer of communication - comments and lightweight signals such as Facebook's likes are part of that layer,"GigaOm said about the possibility of Instagram adding messaging its photo-sharing services. "And so is messaging. The web (and Internet in general) is getting closer to being synchronous, and alive."
According to TechCrunch, Instagram has already "laid some groundwork" for using email on its platform. Users can share photos to their Instagram stream and additionally send them to specific people via email.
While Instagram works this one out, developers have already shown the way forward for what an Instagram messaging service might do. Standalone apps such as Instachat, InstaMessage and InstaDM are among those that let users send direct messages to their Instagram contacts.
