Instagram rolls out clubhouse features for Instagram Live

As After and After Social media platforms are starting to prepare their own Clubhouse clones, Instagram is adding new features to its existing live streaming service to jumpstart the voice chat craze. On Thursday, Instagram announced the rollout of the option to mute your audio or video while using Instagram Live.

Instagram has tested these new features publicly Monday during a live stream on Instagram between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram Director Adam Mosseri. Starting today, global audiences on iOS and Android will have access to it as well.

“We want to grow our Live product and provide even more ways for our community of creators to spark casual and engaging conversations with each other and with their audiences,” a company spokesperson told Gizmodo via email. “By giving users the option to mute or mute their video, hosts will gain additional flexibility for their live streaming experience, as the additional functionality could help reduce the pressure to watch or ring a tape. certain way when broadcasting live. ”

Currently, broadcasters won’t be able to turn video on or off or mute others in their live broadcasts, but Instagram said it is working on adding these types of options soon.

On a related note, Instagram’s parent company Facebook added live audio rooms to its platform and Messenger app in March. It also has a Clubhouse-inspired Q&A platform called Hotline in the works.

LinkedIn, Twitter, Soft, and a slew of other online platforms have jumped at the chance to develop their own voice chat features over the past few months, trying to capitalize on the relaxed, “video off” experience popularized by Clubhouse .

Whether it’s lightning in the pan or not remains to be seen, but Clubhouse investors certainly seem confident in its resistance. The company would have been valued at about $ 4 billion in the midst of negotiations with investors in a round of funding earlier this month. However, Clubhouse’s explosive growth is starting to show signs of decline, Insider reports. According to data from app analytics firm Sensor Tower, the number of monthly app installs worldwide fell between February and March, from 9.6 million downloads to 2.7 million downloads, respectively. .

The rise in popularity of Clubhouse has been in part linked to the coronavirus pandemic which keeps many people trapped inside and pushes them to socially remote opportunities, such as public audio chat rooms, to connect. As the world slowly begins to open up again as vaccines roll out, it looks like the Clubhouse shtick may wear out for some users.