After announcing Live Rooms in March, Instagram is now adding two new features to Instagram Live: Users can now mute their microphones and even turn their video off while on a live stream.
According to TechCrunch, this is another attempt from Instagram to ramp up its competition against Clubhouse:
“Instagram explains these new features will give hosts more flexibility during their livestream experiences, as they can decrease the pressure to look or sound a certain way while broadcasting live. While that may be true, the reality is that Facebook is simply taking another page from Clubhouse’s playbook by enabling a “video off” experience that encourages more serendipitous conversations.”
As for now, hosts won’t be able to turn on or off the video or mute others in the live stream, but Instagram is working on offering more of these types of capabilities to the broadcaster. The first sneak peek of this feature was seen in an Instagram Live between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri on Thursday.
Instagram is also taking on TikTok with a “Remix” function for Reels, launched last month. A couple of weeks from now, the social network started offering three options for managing like counts instead of just removing them.
Instagram owner, Facebook, on the other hand, is more serious about competing with Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces. This month, the company announced three products focused on audio: Soundbites, a kind of short-form audio product, integrating podcasts and songs in the platform with a Spotify partnership, and a new Live Audio feature.
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