Back in August 2016, Facebook introduced ‘Stories’ in Instagram in an attempt to take on Snapchat. Now, a couple of new features as been added by the famous photo sharing app. Live video on Instagram Stories and Disappearing photos and videos for groups and friends in Instagram Direct.
Instagram claims that this update aims at attracting more users to Instagram to use the service even more casual moments.
The Live video on Instagram is similar to Facebook Live except it doesn’t get saved to your profile. So one can only watch it when it is being broadcasted. To start a ‘Live Video’ – Swipe right from the feed to open the inbuilt camera and tap on ‘Start Live Video’. Your friends/followers might get notification of you going Live. Further, you can enable or disable comments on the feed.
Interestingly, the App service owned by Facebook, claims that ‘Instagram Direct’ has increased its user base from 80 million to currently 300 million. To send these videos and photos, tap on the arrow when you are done recording/clicking in the camera menu. Irrespective of your account’s privacy policy, you can only send disappearing videos and photos to the people who follow you. Unlike, normal messages, the photos and videos sent through this will disappear from your friend’s inbox. Further, you’ll get to know if someone replayed the content or took a screenshot.
“To open your inbox, tap the new paper aeroplane icon at the top right corner of your feed or swipe left. You’ll see disappearing photos and videos in a bar at the top. Tap the ones with blue rings to see what your friends sent you. In a group, you can see everyone’s responses – and who else has seen them in a slideshow format.” – read the blog post from Instagram.
It seems like Facebook just won’t give up against Snapchat with continuous new additions to both Instagram and WhatsApp. As rumoured earlier, WhatsApp is also working on a new Status Tab feature which will be a lot similar to Snapchat’s Stories.