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The go-to app for live streaming video back in the day used to be Periscope, the erstwhile little app that soon got swallowed up by Twitter. For a while, Periscope held a monopoly over the live streaming market before it was finally toppled from its throne by none other than Twitter’s long-time rival in social media: Facebook. Facebook Live was quickly adopted by many around the world, first being showcased by celebrities before trickling down to the rest of us. And now it looks like Facebook is aiming to secure its foothold by testing live streaming on an app it acquired some time ago, Instagram.
Instagram is probably the most popular app when it comes to sharing videos and pictures with friends. It boasted nearly 300 million daily active users; people who logged in every day to post pictures of food, their cats and picturesque landscapes. The closest competitor would have to be Snapchat, who in the same time period possessed 150 million daily active users, half of those of Instagram’s. Despite the numbers, however, Snapchat was still surprisingly successful, to the point that Instagram and WhatsApp blatantly copied its “Stories” feature as well as its photo editing features.
However, with Instagram testing live streaming, it looks like it’ll have that one extra tidbit to finally place itself far ahead of the competition, both in terms of users and features. According to a report from Russian news site T Journal, Instagram is testing live video in its ‘Stories’ feature. Apparently, all users have to do to go live is click a large red button titled ‘Go Live’ to start the broadcast. Users who are broadcasting will have their Instagram Story subtitled with a ‘Live’ banner, telling others that they are currently broadcasting.
As of writing this article, the Live feature seems to only be tested in Russia, and then on a beta version of Instagram on Android.
