With live streaming of events and occasions being the order of the day, social media platforms are coming up with various features to improve their live stream options.
Keeping in line with this idea, Instagram has now come up with three new updates related to ‘Live’ events.
Firstly, Instagram users can now go ‘Live’ for up to 4 hours — the time limit till date was 60 minutes.
Instagram has also announced that users will be able to save their live videos for 30 days before they delete.
Users can also see the ‘Live Now’ section in the IGTV app and using that they can discover more ‘Live videos’.
Instagram and Facebook, the synergy grows
We want Instagram to be a place where everyone can follow their interests, reach audiences, engage with communities and build businesses. These updates are another step toward helping creators do that.October 27, 2020
Instagram is rolling out the changes based on users feedback. In the US, Live usage had jumped 70% over numbers from the pre-Covid times.
About the new tweaks, Instagram has been quoted as saying: “This could help people such as instructors (yoga, fitness, schoolteachers etc.) who had to pivot to virtual classes, budding musicians, artists, or activists hosting discussions with fellow peers engage with their audience with no interruption from a 60 min time limit.”
Instagram, to start off, positioned itself as a platform for short videos and clips. But increasing Instagram Live stream time means that it is readying itself for competition, and is also undergoing fundamental change. Instagram’s time limit is now on a par to the one offered by Facebook for live streams from mobile devices. (On desktops though, Facebook offers 8 hours of live streaming.)
Facebook, which owns Instagram, recently merged Instagram DMs and Facebook Messenger. It was done to bring Facebook Messenger’s features like reactions, chat colours, and watching videos in sync with another person to the Insta stable.
Facebook has also been attempting to encourage Instagram users to cross-post their own stories onto Facebook.
