Instagram launches a new way to invite friends in a Live Video

Instagram has rolled out a new feature to boost its Live Video engagement. The Facebook-owned photo-sharing app now lets users send a Live...

Instagram has rolled out a new feature to boost its Live Video engagement. The Facebook-owned photo-sharing app now lets users send a Live Video invitation to friends using the Instagram 'Direct' feature. All they need to do is to tap on the Direct icon. They can send Live Videos they are watching or creating, to users.
"You can now send live videos to friends in Direct. With a single tap of the Direct icon, you can send your own live video — or a live video you're watching — to a friend or a group of friends to encourage them to join in the fun," said Instagram in a blog post.

When users are live, they would need to tap on the 'Direct' icon at the bottom of the screen and send an invitation. Inside the Direct inbox, "friends can only view your video if you're currently live. If your live video is over, your friend will see a message saying the video has ended."
It is possible to disable this feature from the stories settings page. "Today's change makes it easy to invite people to watch your live videos and send exciting live videos you're viewing to your friends in real time," says the photo and video sharing platform.
This feature is already available as a part of Instagram version 26 for both iOS and Android users from App Store and Google Play.
This announcement comes exactly a month after the launch of a feature wherein it lets users join live stories of their friends.
Instagram recently started allowing users to follow hashtags. The company claims that this new method will enable users to discover photos, videos and people more easily than before. In order to find the hashtags that users want to follow, they just have to search for the topics of their interest or tap on a hashtag from posts of other subscribers.