The social networking giant announced that they will be rolling out this feature for us mere mortals over the next few weeks, although it is for now only in the United States, with more countries to be added soon.
Advertisement
This new Facebook feature comes as a rival to live-video streaming mobile apps Meerkat and Periscope, which is owned by Twitter.
Facebook Live was launched in August a year ago to celebrities and a number of verified accounts and pages in the U.S and which was also available on only iOS devices. Imagine your favorite public figure or politician having the power to broadcast from their pocket, go live, have an audience of thousands of people. The video will then be saved to your timeline, where it can be viewed any time, or deleted, should it have turned out to be a disaster.
After clicking the Facebook Live Video icon, a small interface will appear where you can write a quick description of your live stream, and also select your viewers meaning you can pick which to stream (either public or friends only). Live event streaming is not just for famous people and iOS users anymore.
Facebook had been receiving requests from various Android users and it had promised to bring this feature soon.
Thus, the social media titan is stretching their live video to Android devices next week.
“Live video is one of the things I am most excited about, because it’s so raw and so visceral”, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at a town hall Q&A Friday.
There’s a lot more that I think needs to be done to give people the ability to connect with the people and figures that they’re interested in.
The message to the Twitter folks: Do a better job of connecting millions of Twitter fans to public figures they choose to follow…
Periscope live broadcasts are now viewable directly in Twitter.
Advertisement
“Live videos on Facebook are authentic and exciting, and we’re seeing people tuning in and engaging directly with broadcasters in the moment”, said Facebook product manager Vadim Lavrusik and engineering manager Dave Capra in a blog post.
