Instagram has something big up its sleeve. The photo-sharing platform and Facebook subsidiary will make a rare appearance in New York City on Thursday for an unveiling, and no one knows for certain what its announcement will be. I do, however, have a pretty good idea.

My money is on a new, live communication platform within Instagram. Think Snapchat meets, well, Instagram. I suspect Instagram will introduce the following:

Instagram Chats that include a messaging or chat function for real-time discussion.

A suite of tools for enhancing images with text (MEME and standard captions) and more conversational imagery.

A contact system overhaul that allows you to see, with permission, who else is live and ready to chat on Instagram.

The ability to make chat-based or direct Instagrams temporary. In other words, they can disappear in one day, five minutes or two weeks. Perhaps those intervals will be adjustable by the user.

The option to make Instagrams private, shared between only a group of Instagram friends or with just one other user.

The art and captioning tools will extend beyond traditional Instagram filters and allow users to draw on images and add icons and avatars.

Instagram may also push the envelope and include video in this communication toolkit, though I have trouble envisioning exactly how.

We’re Still Cool

Facebook purchased Instagram for $1 billion in 2012. A mostly hands-off approach has given way to firmer control of the social media brand and its updates. When Instagram unveiled Instagram video earlier this year, for example, it was Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg who delivered the news.

This time, however, the invitation makes no mention of Facebook, and it’s highly unlikely that Zuckerberg will show up in New York to introduce Instagram’s communication platform. The reason is obvious enough.

First of all, an Instagram communication platform would be designed to help Instagram compete with the rapidly growing teen favorite Snapchat. The growth of the image-sharing startup is meteoric; in just a few months, the number of photos shared on the platform doubled from 200 million to the current 400 million. If you don’t count video, that number outstrips Facebook’s daily photo share count by 50 million. For comparison, Instagram’s 130 million users share roughly 55 million photos each day.

Facebook needs Instagram to help bolster its share numbers, so why isn’t the social media giant taking center stage at this announcement? Because teens don’t like Facebook. While that’s a very broad statement, there are some hard numbers to support this, aside from anecdotal evidence. A recent Piper Jaffray study asked more than 7,000 teens to rank social networks by preference. Initially, the news looked good: Facebook remains the most important social network to teens, with Twitter as a close second.

However, the trend line is not favorable. The report shows a significant decline in Facebook interest among teens between spring 2012 and spring 2013. Twitter declined as well, but only slightly. Instagram remained flat between fall 2012 and spring 2103.

A Pew study also acknowledged this trend. It said 77% of surveyed teens are on Facebook, but their interest is “waning.”

I see some of these trends in my own world. Neither of my teen children are active on Facebook; they prefer Tumblr and Instagram. I recently came across a full-page article in the newspaper of one of our local high schools devoted to why students don’t use Facebook. It prematurely described Facebook as “dead.” And, of course, there’s this.

Zuckerberg insists teens aren’t leaving, but he also said the “cool” has left the building, or something to that effect.

Whether or not Facebook executives think the platform has a teen problem, I’d say they are savvy enough to know that an announcement with “Facebook” in the lead could very well turn off teens. Instagram, though, is still cool. Many of their idols (think Nikki Minaj, Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber) are active on the service.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see a celebrity or two help Instagram demonstrate its new capabilities on Thursday.

This Better Work

I could be dead wrong about this. Instagram could unveil a piece of hardware to help you view your favorite Instagrams or some new integration with Facebook best friend, Microsoft’s Windows 8. But those options seem very unlikely.

Facebook cannot allow chat and messaging apps like Keek, the international darling WhatsApp and Snapchat to steal its teen thunder. Instagram remains its best way into teens' mobile hearts and hands. Teens may treat Facebook like Gmail users treat Google+, but they will still, more or less, be engaged with the service. The closer Facebook can get teens to hold Instagram in their social spheres, the better chance it will have of reintroducing them to the platform.

Image: Mashable, Christina Ascani