Remember, when people went crazy with the Instagram Live Videos? Videos by their favorite celebrities were watched worldwide and now guess what, Instagram just added another feature to its video streaming service; the addition of guests to home videos!
This might be a big deal for those, who don’t feel comfortable at going live to the whole world or their followers on their own. Adding a guest would help in avoiding the shyness which involved while broadcasting such a video. Or that, this new feature would also be beneficial for those who always wanted to be more social by involving other faces, not just theirs, in a Live Video being streamed.
As a result of such high demand, Instagram finally announced that the addition of guests was now possible to their live video streams.
This feature was not just rolled out to everyone all at once abruptly. Instead, it was rolled out in phases; on the basis of a limited test which was initiated in August by Instagram and was directed towards a smaller group of users. This test would then ultimately aid to a more gradual expansion of streaming the Live messages and Video which was launched itself quite recently just about a year ago.
For those actually interested in how the feature works, its pretty simple; while you are streaming the video, and if the person you want to add is currently watching the video too, then simply press the “add” button in the corner of your screen. After a person is added, that person simply pops in a separate window below you own windows on the same screen. The only downside currently would be that it only allows you to add one person at a time, unlike Houseparty where you could add several. If you want to add another person, you would have to remove the previous one first.
Well, like me, if you just are more of a viewer rather than a sender, then two circles coupled together in the stories status bar would enable you to know that someone is performing a Live Video along with a guest. Much like the usual Live videos, you are able to either save them to live on as stories or let them simply discard themselves. This saving, in turn, would also indirectly enable you to share them to Facebook as Facebook Stories.
From my perspective, it is clear why Instagram wanted to implement this feature. In this way, the kind of interaction is pretty much different than the one in a solo live video. It surely helps the person making the video engage more in their conversation, and cater to a wide range of audience, involving fans or friends of both the personalities if not one.
On the contrary while, most of us think that these Live Stories and Videos were just in relation to the massive response received by Snapchat, these features have gained ever more attention and importance with Instagram as well, amounting the total number of people who use this feature to millions!