The photo and video sharing social media Instagram starts allowing users to broadvast a live Story alongside a friend. After testing the feature with a number of selected users, the company is rolling it out to all users.
Shared Stories allows users to pick anyone who is watching their live broadcast, to join in. Once the two users are linked, the screen will be split into two, and anyone who follows each users will be able to view the combined live Story.
The Shared Stories show as a stacked circle on the Stories timeline.
This feature opens the possibilities for many things. Including interviews to spicing up regular stories, or just for users to make a two-way video call.
Initially, the feature only allows two users to broadcast a Story together. After the Story has been taken, Instagram will keep it for the usual 24 hours. Users can delete the Story if they want to, or share them on Facebook.
This feature is an added plus to Instagram. As one of the social media with the highest engagement, Instagram is directly competing with Snapchat and some others, and this feature can propel it further ahead.
However, this added feature is again putting Instagram away from its traditional character: a simple to use app with simple interface and no gimmicks. Instagram has gone far from just a simple photo-sharing app, and entered messaging, Stories and also live Stories.
Instagram Stories are meant to be ephemeral and somehow private. But with with Shared Stories, Instagram has gone beyond simple Stories, and at the same time the process for going live more complicated than what dedicated video apps can provide.
So here, Instagram Shared Stories is not the simplest option at the moment with the many choices out there.
But the Facebook-owned app, and even Facebook itself, has had no problem in blatantly copying its competitors. And video calls is certainly its logical step in improving what it has.
Since launching Stories in August 2016, Instagram's users have soared to 700 million monthly active users globally. This has proven that whatever it is doing, as long as it's better than the competition, it can succeed.