On Monday, Instagram's live video feature was made available to U.S. users. Considered as one of its biggest updates towards being "in the moment", the Facebook-owned service says soon this will be available to other countries.
While it's no surprise since the app's parent-company offers the same with Facebook Live, Instagram's live videos behave more Snapchat-like than that of Facebook. Mashable said the live videos in Instagram are only available while the broadcast is ongoing.
According to Techcrunch, users who follow a certain account will get notified if it goes live. Others may see them as suggestions. If you want to go live, simply swipe Stories into the camera then tap the toggle to enter "Live" mode.
Instagram has well over half a billion users and this live video is the latest in the series of updates from a few months back. In case you've missed them, Cnet listed all of them down:
In August, Zoom was implemented. This allowed users to zoom in on a photo from their feed by pinching on the screen. It's one great feature to finally be able to see a 'bigger' picture but be careful with those gestures since it can also be treated as a 'like'.
One month later, the app allowed users to manage and save drafts. Bet there are a few million users delighted to finally have something like this in Instagram. Crop and filter photos as usual then simply click on the back arrow at the top-left corner. A pop-up will ask if you want to save as draft or discard, once you choose to save, a new section will appear in the app's photo library. This feature also applies to videos.
Then there's Stories if it sounds familiar, it's because it's already in Snapchat. This feature allows users to upload a bunch of pictures instead of just one image then the images disappear at the end of the day.
There are also those disappearing messages. As the name implies, it can play once for the recipient and then it's gone or play on for a day on you Stories before it disappears. You can only send these disappearing messages to accounts you follow that follows you back. It also notifies the sender if the recipient takes screenshots of the message.
