NEW: Instagram parties

In recent weeks, we’ve seen a ton of people searching for co-watching apps like Netflix Party and Showgoers on Product Hunt as more and more people are isolated at home. So it’s timely that Instagram launched “Co-Watching,” a new feature that turns Instagram away from a solo experience into a multi-person party.

Co-Watching lets friends who are hanging out on a video chat browse through Instagram content together, with the goal of making Instagram a more social and active place to hang out in online. 👋

“We've been FaceTiming everyone we know the past few weeks. I love a new way to help make it feel like we're actually hanging out with people during this isolation.” - Jacqueline

The sentiment behind Co-Watching reminds us a lot of Squad, an app that lets groups of friends screen share while they video chat. Just like Squad, up to six people can “Co-Watch” at once on Instagram, where they can consume all feed content except for IGTV videos and private posts.

In addition to Co-Watching, Instagram has rolled out a number of efforts to help spread awareness around COVID-19, specifically enforcing the importance of isolating at this time. If you’ve spent any time on Instagram lately (haven’t we all?), you’ve likely seen the shared Instagram Story from any accounts that you follow that have posted the “Stay Home” sticker to their Stories. Instagram has also removed COVID-19 accounts from recommendations (unless posted by a credible health organization) and rolled out the donation sticker in more countries to help people find relevant nonprofits to support.

Will you try out Co-Watching? If you do, let us know how it goes. 👀

In this week’s edition of Product Hunt Radio, we talk to Ethan Eismann, VP of Design at Slack. He previously worked on flagship products at Google, Uber, and Airbnb, as well as at Adobe back when Flash was still a thing. In this episode, we cover bringing personality to software, the design philosophy at Slack, and what it means to communicate energy (as well as information).

We’ll be back next week with another special guest, so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. 😻