Instagram will let you invite friends onto your livestream
The photo-sharing service hopes you'll host a personal talk show on it.
Instagram will soon let you invite friends to a live video.
Instagram is looking to make live videos a lot more chatty by letting broadcasters add a guest to a livestream.
The feature, announced Tuesday, will let people using it add someone by tapping a new icon in the bottom-right corner of the screen and hitting an "Add" button. Anyone who is watching the stream is eligible to be invited on, and when they do the screen will split in two. The host will be on top while the guest broadcasting from their own phone will appear on the bottom.
After the broadcast ends, the video can either be saved to Instagram Stories for 24 hours or discarded to make them disappear.
Instagram suggests this feature can be used to make ordinary conversation a public affair, even stating that "just doing homework" could be a lovely time to host a public Instagram show.
Instagram is the latest social network to add live broadcasts with guests. Facebook Live rolled out a similar feature to the public last spring, and Google's Hangouts on Air with YouTube Live has had its own live broadcasts for years. Both of those also usually leave the video online after the broadcast for others to watch later. Instagram's however will disappear, either immediately or after they are removed from Stories.
The feature is currently in testing, with only a "small percentage" of users getting it at first. It will be made available globally over the next few months.