Facebook's all-out embrace of live video appears to be heading to Instagram. A new report from a Russian news site
shows live functionality embedded into Instagram stories, with a bold
"LIVE" banner on what is apparently a live video appearing at the front
of the stories feed. The report from T Journal also shows the user interface for going live from Instagram, which includes a giant red button reading "Go Insta!"
Instagram declined to comment. Tech sources have been telling me for
more than a year that Instagram would add live video eventually.
Facebook believes that fully immersive live experiences are the future —
it's one of the reasons the company is investing so heavily in virtual
reality — and it sees live video as a bridge to get there.
Live video is also a way to attract spending from the lucrative
television advertising market, which Facebook is working very hard to
crack.
Instagram's addition of Snapchat-style stories to the app
this summer appears to have given the company a convenient place inside
the product to place the new format. Looking at the screenshots posted
to T Journal, it's easy to imagine opening Instagram and browsing a
series of live channels to see what they're broadcasting at any given
moment. According to a Google translation of the T Journal
article, clicking the icon in the screenshot above took the user to a
page of "popular live broadcasts," which returned an error.
The report said a user discovered the live button while running the beta version of Instagram on Android. Update, 6:36 p.m.: Updated to note that Instagram declined to comment.
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