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Instagram is introducing a new profile banner that will display a user’s upcoming livestreams, the company announced on Wednesday. Instagram head Adam Mosseri detailed the new feature in a video published to his social media profiles and noted that users can now display a badge on their profile to let others know that they have a livestream coming up. Once the banner is up, followers can subscribe to get reminded about the livestream.
Users can create as many scheduled Lives as they’d like. If there’s more than one upcoming Live, they’ll be displayed as a side-scrolling list. Mosseri noted that in the past, users would notify their followers about upcoming Lives through a post or Story. With this new feature, Instagram is launching a dedicated way for users to notify others about scheduled Lives. The badge won’t only be visible to your followers, but also to anyone else who may come across your profile, which could attract more viewers.
Instagram’s Live feature has become a key part of the app, especially for creators on the platform who use the tool as a way to directly engage with their followers. The company has been fine-tuning the feature to take on competitors like Clubhouse, Facebook and TikTok. Instagram has added several functionalities to Lives, such as the option to mute and turn off video and the ability to broadcast with up to four creators. Although it’s a small change, Instagram’s new profile banners for scheduled Lives could help creators get additional exposure and reach more users on the app.
In the same video, Mosseri also outlined that users can now remix any video content on the app, which is a change that Instagram announced a few days ago. The company officially launched Remix, which is its version of TikTok Duets, in March 2021. The feature lets users record their Reels video alongside a video from another user. Up until now, you could only remix short-form Reels. Now, you can remix any public video on the app. But this only applies to videos published publicly from this point forward, as the feature won’t work on older content.
In addition to these new features, Instagram also recently launched an early test of creator subscriptions in the United States. Select creators are now able to offer their followers paid access to exclusive Instagram Live videos and Stories. Creators can choose their own price point for access to their exclusive content. Paid subscribers will be marked with a special badge, differentiating them from unpaid users in the sea of comments. Instagram isn’t the only social media platform looking to experiment with subscriptions, as TikTok has also confirmed that it’s testing support for paid subscriptions.
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