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Facebook Inc.'s Instagram app is launching a photo- and video-messaging service, soon after popular mobile app Snapchat spurned a $3 billion offer from the social network.
The new app, Instagram Direct, follows Facebook's disclosure in October that some teens are spending less time on the service, spurring questions from analysts and investors.
Facebook's safety net against its "teen problem" has been Instagram, a public photo- and video-sharing service that it purchased for $1 billion last year. Instagram has 150 million monthly active users, and is popular with younger people.
But Instagram didn't have a messaging service to compete with the likes of Snapchat, WhatsApp and others.
"We stepped back and said what would we build if we want to allow you to send to anyone you want, whenever you want," said Instagram founder Kevin Systrom at a New York event Thursday. He called the new feature a "simple way to send videos to your friends."
When a recipient opens an Instagram Direct photo or video, a green check mark appears next to their screen name, letting the sender know the message was received. If a user likes the message, a heart appears. Unlike Snapchat, where messages disappear in a few seconds, Instagram Direct messages will remain until a user deletes them.
A big question for Instagram Direct is whether it is new and different enough to attract teens who use one or more other mobile-messaging apps.
Mobidia, maker of a mobile app that tracks usage data, says the biggest players by minutes used are South Korea's Kakao Talk, WhatsApp, Canada's Kik Messenger, Japan's Line, China's WeChat and BlackBerry Messenger.
A YPulse Inc. survey in January showed that 65% of people under 18 thought Facebook was "losing its cool factor."
Facebook's first tried a Snapchat-like app a year ago. It released an almost identical app called "Poke," which gave users the ability to send a temporary message to individual recipients, including disappearing photos and videos. Nearly a year later, the app hasn't caught on widely. Facebook also has its own messenger app, but that too has struggled to win users.
In a blow to Facebook, Snapchat last week said it had hired Emily White, Instagram's director of business operations, as its chief operating officer.
"I don't know if it solves their teen problem," Needham & Co. analyst Kerry Rice said in anticipation of the announcement. Mr. Rice said the fast growth of several competing messaging apps is forcing Facebook to innovate. "There's always another company coming up behind you with a new perspective that will start to erode your user base," he said.
In a way Facebook is a victim of its own success, as it has grown to 1.2 billion active users. A Pew Research Center study in May found that teens had a "waning" interest in Facebook in part because of "an increasing adult presence."
Dan Salmon, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets, put Facebook's challenge this way. "It's essentially impossible to be both a mainstream media platform and a niche teen one at the same time," he said.
Write to Reed Albergotti at reed.albergotti@wsj.com
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