Instagram to get live video

Everyone has live video these days and Facebook-owned Instagram is getting in on the action. According to Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom, the company is working on bringing live video to users in the future. There is no specific timeline for it but it might be similar to Facebook Live. If you want to start streaming an event for someone, you just open the Instagram camera and start recording.

Screenshots of the feature have surfaced and it shows the feature will show if someone is live in the same spot you see Stories within the app.  If someone you follow is live, you’ll see a red ring around the profile photo and when you tap on that it’ll take you directly to the broadcast.

Source: Droid Life

Instagram brings mentions, links, and Boomerang to Stories

Instagram is trying to add more value to its Snapchat counterpart with a bunch of new features. One is being able to make Boomerang posts on Instagram Stories. Much like how the standalone Boomerang app works, just tap the record button and have the camera stitch together a burst of photos to turn these into a GIF-like video that plays forward and backward.

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Mute Instagram Stories you don’t want to see

Did you know you could mute Instagram Stories of specific users? All you need to do is head to the top of your Feed, tap and hold the profile picture of the person or brand Stories that you’d want to mute. From there you can select Mute [username]’s Story. The Stories you’ve muted will appear at the end of the Instagram Stories bar and won’t have a color ring around it to indicate an update. These stories won’t also play if you watch a sequence of Instagram Stories. If you change your mind, you can unmute the account by repeating the steps above and just select Unmute [username]’s Story.

Source: Instagram

Instagram kills off photo maps feature

You may or may not have been aware of the photo maps feature of Instagram. Now you don’t even have to think about it as Instagram is killing off the feature. According to a statement released by the social network, the feature wasn’t really widely used so Instagram has decided to just get rid of it and focus on other features. Photo maps, if you had it activated, shows a map you can zoom in on to see locations where you’ve geotagged photos. For now, you’ll be able to see your photo map but you won’t see those of others and Instagram has started to remove the feature for some users since last week.

This harks back to the roots of Instagram, where you used it much like a location-based app but you tagged photos instead of just tagging a location. Now, Instagram still has that spontaneity to it but it also now acts as a portfolio of sorts for some of its users, showing best parts of your life.

Source: Mashable