Instagram recently upgraded its feature of live-streaming allowing user to go live with a friend in accordance with the latest trends.

What Instagram has to say

“Live video helps you share in an authentic way, but sometimes it can be intimidating when you’re on your own. Starting today, we’re testing a fun way to go live with a friend. Now, you can hang out and go live together, whether you’re just doing homework or catching up on your day.”

“The use case that caught our attention was people just hanging out on live, particularly young people. After school, they jump on a live stream and hang out. That use of live video is particularly interesting to us.”

The ‘Houseparty’ competition

During last year, the developers of Meerkat, a live-streaming platform launched a multi-person live stream app called Houseparty enabling 8 people at a time. The app’s rising demand and growing user showed that the feature was in high demand.

The race for Users

Facebook after monitoring such trends launched group video chats in Messenger and Instagram launching live-streaming. And now there are to be live guests on Instagram’s video stream.

How to use the option?

To add a guest, click on the ‘two-face’ icon at the bottom of the screen. Anyone can be invited to join.

When someone joins, the screen gets divided into two equal parts unlike Facebook’s guest option.

Why did the others failed?

The biggest problem the makers face is the quality of live-streaming during broadcasting i.e. managing real time content. Therefore, the market of Meerkat and Blab got flunked.

The Marketing strategy

The guest option would prove helpful from marketing perspective as the viewers could watch the Instagram Stories live, where the broadcast could be saved for later. Since brands are using the Stories as well, then this could be a fruitful strategy in all.