Facebook on Saturday announced an array of new features for its photo-sharing platform Instagram.
Instagram Live
Considering the growing popularity of Instagram Live, the social media giant has now brought live videos to desktop after recently bringing direct messages to its web platform.
Users can now also save their live videos to IGTV, Facebook had said.
“There are now over 800 million daily active users across Facebook and Instagram Live, and we're adding new features to make Lives even more useful. On @Instagram, we're bringing live videos to desktop and adding a feature that lets you save live videos to IGTV,” Facebook had tweeted.
Challenges stickers
Instagram is also testing a new ‘Challenges stickers’ feature for its stories that lets users join challenges through a sticker, via the stories text tool, or from nominations from friends.
“We’ve seen that challenges are a fun way to interact with your friends on social media and that people are using @mentions, text and hashtags to join popular challenges. Now, with this new sticker, you’ll be able to participate, nominate your friends, and keep the fun going!” Instagram said.
Users can join a challenge from other people's stories by tapping on the challenge sticker to try it themselves. All users can try a challenge, even without being nominated.
Alternately, when someone nominates another user for a challenge, they will receive a direct message notifying them of the nomination and their mention in the story.
Users can try the challenge directly from their friend’s story by tapping on “Try This Challenge” to open the camera with a “Nominated by” challenge sticker. They can then share this to their own story and their nominator will be tagged in their story.
“For this test, everyone will be able to participate in challenges, but only a limited number of challenges will be available,” Instagram said.
AR experiences
The social media platform is also looking to create a centralized experience building on its ‘Stay Home’ and ‘Ghar Pe Raho’ stickers launched last week.
This includes the ‘Guess The Gibberish’ AR effect, along with others like ‘Drawin5secons’ and ‘’Name By letter…’.
It will also continue to update the “Stay At Home” collection with new effects.