Starting today, Instagram users around the world can add friends to livestream videos, following successful testing over the last few months.
You can invite anyone who’s watching your live broadcast to join in. At the moment there’s only the option for one guest at a time, but that may change going forward.
Instagram will be hoping the new feature will encourage more people to have a go at livestreaming, especially those a bit shy to do it by themselves. They say that two heads are better than one, a piece of advice Instagram seems to have taken on board with its latest feature.
Starting today, Instagram is letting users “go live with a friend”. The Facebook-owned platform introduced live video broadcast last November, and says that since then it has been adopted by millions of users to broadcast to their followers.
Now it’s also going to be possible to add a buddy to your broadcast. The feature is currently in testing with a small subset of users, Instagram revealed today, but will be rolled out globally over the coming months.
If you’re one of the lucky users chosen for the test, all you need to do is tap the new icon in the bottom right and tap “Add” to invite someone who is currently watching. The screen will then split in two, with the second party appearing below your on the feed. Viewers can like and comment as usual.
Don’t worry if the other person begins to steal your thunder – then you can kick them from your broadcast, or they can leave of their own accord.
At the end of your live session, you can then save the broadcast in Stories, or discard it, as per usual.
The addition is one of many new features Instagram has added this year, including face filters back in May, and the “Boomerang” feature for the camera which makes videos play in reverse.
DigitalSpy
