New reports indicate that Instagram could soon graduate to host its own Live Video feature alongside its newest feature, Instagram Stories.
Of late, Facebook has steered Instagram to become something of its own Snapchat competitor, and now the photo sharing social network could graduate to inherit a feature from its parent company – Live Video.
The report comes from Russian media house T Journal, where an Instagram user discovered that some open Instagram Stories were accompanied by a ‘LIVE’ icon – indicating that in future one might be able to share a live video through the service in addition to a pre-recorded one.
Read: Facebook is allegedly developing a standalone live video app
When the user in question pressed the LIVE icon, they were reportedly sent to a unique page containing other ‘Popular Live Broadcasts’ – supposedly an area through which Instagram users will be able to flit between active channels.
The service would add another dimension to the platform’s Stories feature, and could theoretically inherit similar features to Facebook’s core Live Video experience.
While the LIVE video feature was found on a beta client of Instagram on a Google Nexus 6P, the social network itself hasn’t offered any timeline of when we can expect the new feature to drop. However, as the feature is reportedly in beta it shouldn’t be too long before it officially graduates to become a mainstream component of the app.
The move will be the first occasion the platform has had to one-up Snapchat, as the two have been in staunch competition since the introduction of Stories earlier this year. Critically, Instagram was able to rally over 100 million daily active users to its newest feature in just two months; while Snapchat has had years to amass a reported figure of 150 million daily active users.
Read: WeChat owner Tencent unveils a new, dedicated live-streaming drone
What are your thoughts? Be sure to let us know in the comments below!
Follow Bryan Smith on Twitter: @bryansmithSA
