The ‘Gram is going live. Instagram will soon activate a new live video feature, confirmed in an announcement yesterday from the picture-driven social media app. It’s not available to all users yet, i=but is currently in testing.
When someone you follow starts a live story, you’ll see “Live” under their profile photo in the stories bar. During the broadcast, you can comment and like as much as you want. You can also check out new live stories on Explore. Tap “Top Live” to see exciting live stories happening at that moment and swipe right and left to easily skip around.
Live video on Instagram Stories and Explore will be rolling out globally over the next few weeks. – Instagram’s official announcement on November 21st.
And yes, it’s a lot like Facebook Live and Periscope (did we all forget about Periscope already?), in that it works on mobile devices and is easy to turn on. There are some key differences though on how the video itself is viewed by others on IG. Instagram Live videos disappear from the app after their initial live broadcast ends, unlike Facebook where those live videos remain to be watched later. This could be meant to make the experience more intimate and allow people to make the content more passive.
IG also announced in this update yesterday another new feature in direct-message video to allow users to send video direct to one another. Just like direct video on Snapchat, the video is only watchable twice. It’s not the only move that IG has made recently that seems a very similar to Snapchat, as in August they introduced ‘Stories’ which has 100 million users each day already. It’s worth noting for tech novices that Facebook should not feel to threatened by this move by IG, as they are Instagram’s parent company. Lord Zuckerberg’s empire grows and grows.
Don’t worry Snapchat is not sitting on their yellow laurels, they too are introducing new features to stay hot in the social video universe with their first piece of hardware, ‘Spectacles’. Check out video of them here.
The tech insiders of the Verge really break down IG’s new video changes and how they match up to other apps even more, read that here.
