Previously Instagram introduced the video chat on its Direct tab, allowing up to 4 persons to join a group video chat. Now, Instagram supports up to six persons, so you no longer have to leave out some of your friends. Other than the increase in number of people allowed in a video chat, it is still as it always has been. You can still use other features on the app by minimising the video call such as posting pictures, scrolling through news feed and messaging in the Direct tab.
Seems like video chats are given more and more attention these days, with all the social media apps such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat getting the feature in their apps. Facebook’s video chat allows up to 6 people (just like Instagram) whereas Snapchat allows up to 16 people to video chat together. There’s also WhatsApp that used to only allow one-to-one video call but has now allowed up group video calls of four people. Who knows, Twitter might one day do the same.
On a side note, Apple is also bringing group video calling into the iOS 12.1, allowing up to 32 people to video chat at the same time. I suppose it’s made for conference calls or business meetings as it seems rather unlikely that normal social media users will want to call another 31 of their friends altogether. Besides, how are we going to communicate if all 32 people speaks at once? We can only find out once the iOS update is released.