What Is Instagram’s New ‘Live Rooms’ Feature?

Live Rooms is the latest feature that Instagram has added to their platform. Pioneered in India in December 2020 and later released to the rest of the world on the 1st of March 2021, Instagram Live Rooms allow up to four users to partner in a live broadcast instead of the previous limit of just two people.  

Ever since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Instagram and other social media platforms have been working on new features that people working from home can use to stay updated in real-time. 

According to Instagram, this feature will give a platform to creators, public figures, and other users to collaborate in podcasts and live streaming, educating, and fun discussions. Ordinary Instagram users can also use Live Rooms to have casual conversions with up to 4 of their friends. When the broadcasters go live, all their followers get an invite to watch the broadcast. As a way of respecting the live streamers’ privacy, users blocked by any of them are denied access to this Live Room. 

Having up to 4 broadcasters means the audiences that follow these live broadcasts will be much bigger than when they were two in the previous version of this feature, which could leave to larger rooms. Having only two people in a live room was a little limiting, especially when discussing subjects that require more than two parties to participate. 

Instagram Live Rooms Vs. Clubhouse

The most apparent platform that can be compared to Instagram’s new Live Rooms feature is Clubhouse, an audio social app that lets users go live in rooms. With Clubhouse, up to 25+ users are allowed as speakers in the room and around 8000 users in the audience. 

But Clubhouse is still by invite, so not everyone has access to this app just yet. Clubhouse is also an iOS exclusive, but the platform promises to release an Android version of the application later this year. There are also rumors of Facebook (Instagram’s parent company) building a feature that will directly mimic Clubhouse. 

How Live Rooms will change the way creators use Instagram 

IGTV is one of the older Instagram features that many creators use to communicate with their audience, which allows creating or sharing recorded videos of more than one minute and publishing them on your Instagram. The good news is that Instagram allows exporting Live Rooms broadcasts and posting them as IGTV posts. Therefore, we expect most creators to always export their Lives to enable users who weren’t online to watch these videos. 

The only unknown, for now, is how the Instagram algorithm will be ranking these exported live videos in its news feed. 

All in all, increasing the number of participants in Live Rooms from two to four is something that will likely make this Live Rooms feature more valuable than it was when the maximum limit was two in the previous version.