With video views up over 80 percent in the past year, Instagram has decided to capitalize on the success of their stories feature with an exciting roll out. To drive social media engagement, live video streamers can now add a guest to join their broadcast. Sort of like co-hosting, the user can add guests to the live story. Guests appear in the bottom half of the screen where they can interact in real time and help diversify content for the viewers!

It’s a simple process to start your first live video with a guest. One of you will proceed to go live, as usual, then, once you are live, the user you would like to be your guest has to start watching your stream. From there, you will hit the “Add” button and choose them from your list of live viewers. At that time, you will share the screen and can start your dialogue. 

Photo courtesy of TechCrunch

This display shows your avatars together in the top bar of stories. Just like personal live videos, you can choose to save the video for 24 hours or delete it all together.

This may also be a way for users to see higher retention and more interaction on their live videos. I love tuning into Something Navy’s live videos and as a fan of banter, it would be even more exciting to watch her content if she brought on guests to talk about trending topics! 

As avid live video users, we tested this feature on the Socialfly Instagram. Here are some of our thoughts:

1. Surprisingly, the video didn’t lag between users. It worked seamlessly and allowed us to have a real-time conversation without any disconnect on either side.
2. Make sure that both parties are using secure WiFi networks when testing this feature.
3. We think this is going to be a great feature for companies in the social and advertising sphere, live interviews for journalists (especially with the need for international coverage), and influencers who like to host Q&A’s with other influencers or potentially on behalf of a brand!
4. In the future, we would love to see this roll out so multiple users can host live together.
5. We predict this feature will increase social media engagement on Instagram. Users may be more inclined to watch a video that feels like a conversation.

We applaud this creative update! Try it out with a friend and let us know your thoughts, tweet to us @socialfly!