Instagram’s Live feature has been upgraded in ways that allow users in India to have up to three guests, which unfortunately is not available in other regions. The social media platform’s current focus on Indian users comes in the wake of local competitors that emerged as potential contenders, when the Indian government banned TikTok.
India’s TikTok ban and that of other Chinese-owned app aim to purge the country of China-developed technologies, as these are suspected of giving the Chinese government backdoor access to their platforms. Since the border conflict between China and India has not been resolved, but has instead intensified, any product or technologies made or developed in China are being banned in India.
Upgrade Inspired by the Growing Number of Instagram Live Users in India
In the past months, the statistics of Indian IG users utilizing the platform’s Live feature indicated an increase of 60% since TikTok was banned from India in June 2020.
According to Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, they have been looking for ways to allow more guests in Instagram Live since March last year. There were also other ideas mentioned as possible upgrades to Live such as making it accessible on browser and similar other features.
It’s a good decision that the company expanded the Live feature by including additional guests to allow panel discussions and multi-interviews. However, for Instagram to rollout this new functionality in other regions, developers have to weigh the server load and their capacity for managing a larger scale feature. In all probability, the upgrade in India is one way of beta testing, allowing them to gauge how the feature can be rolled out in other regions without any hiccups.
Instagram Needs to Keep Beefing-Up Its Features in India
Tiktok’s exit in India came at a time when Instagram was ready with its Reels feature, which is very similar to what the TikTok platform does. While more than 200 million Indian users migrated to YouTube and Instagram, the TikTok ban also presented an opportunity for local providers of video-sharing app in the likes of Mitron, Roposo, and Chingar, to attract and build their own base of Indian followers.
According to statistical reports, 22 million users migrated to the Indian video-sharing platform Roposo immediately after the TikTok ban. Denoting that Instagram has to add more unique features if it wants to put its social media platform way ahead of competitors in addition to YouTube.
Influencers and marketers in India will have to find the best way of creating content using Instagram Reels, Stories and Live since they too will be facing increased competition. The first step is to analyze posts so they can determine who, where and when their audience are coming from and which content works best among India’s diverse cultural groups. A leading provider of analytics tool that has been proven to provide the most useful information is https://sharemyinsights.com/.
