Now go Instagram Live with a friend!

It’s always easier to do goofy things when you’re with a friend, and for anyone that finds going Live on social media platforms intimidating, you can now add guests to your Instagram Live stream.

Live Video on Instagram has been a successful introduction with many influencers, celebrities, and athletes regularly using the service to interact with their fans and followers, but beyond the influential few, not many users are confident enough to broadcast their real time activities to their hundreds or thousands of followers. Adding guests to you Instagram Live stream makes you much more comfortable and likely to use the service more often.

Said to be testing for a while now with a smaller group of Instagram users since August, it is the next step towards expanding the popularity and adoption of Instagram Live among users.

Currently, you can only add one guest to your Instagram Live stream by tapping the two smiley faces icon at the bottom of the screen, and can remove your added guest to add someone else. Your guest too can choose to leave if they want to, and this makes Instagram Live a worthy (heir? ally?) to Facebook Live, who themselves are working towards introducing the same on their platform.

Live broadcasts with a guest shall remain shareable upon conclusion as they always have, and if two of your friends are Live together, you will see their Stories circles together with Live under it, as depicted below. They can also be shared on Facebook Stories as a part of their recent update that allows cross posting Stories from Instagram to Facebook.

Fairly uncomplicated.

And it works wonders for engagement because I would certainly feel the need to join in and witness the shenanigans of two of my friends, or even better, two of my favourite athletes, say a Cristiano Ronaldo and Sergio Ramos, or if I’m being completely honest, maybe watch Amanda Cerny Live stream with Iskra! (Ozzy’s Dreamer plays in the distance.)

Ingrid Lunden from TechCrunch writes, “With guests, you are essentially creating dialogues and ways for people to interact. That implies conversations and perhaps new kinds of videos getting created around, say, interviews or other kinds of interactions beyond the kind that already exist in comments on your posts.”

A part of the Instagram version 20 available for iOS in the Apple App Store and for Android in Google Play, users who receive the update will be able to add a guest to their live stream.