Facebook has launched the "Instagram Live" service in an attempt to counter the competition from the new social media application Clubhouse, by introducing the integrated Messenger Rooms feature on Facebook and starting an online "Question and Answer" (Q&A) platform experiment.
Instagram explains that these new features will provide hosts with more flexibility during live streaming experiences, allowing them to reduce pressure on the audio or visual aspects in a certain way during broadcasts.
While this may be true, the reality is that Facebook has simply borrowed another page from Clubhouse's playbook by offering the "turn off video" option, which encourages more casual conversations.
It is noted that hosts of live sessions on Instagram currently cannot turn video on or off or mute others during the broadcast, but the Instagram application, owned by Facebook, states that it is working on providing more of these capabilities, which are expected to be rolled out soon.
Instagram indicated that it publicly tested the new features last week through an Instagram Live session between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri.
