Before Periscope and Meerkat jumpstarted the mobile live-streaming craze, Facebook was already quietly working on its own way to let public figures broadcast live videos to their fans. Today, Facebook is launching “Live” as a feature in its Mentions app that’s only available to celebrities with a verified Page.
VIPs can start a Live broadcast that’s posted to the News Feed, watch comments overlaid in real-time on their stream, and then make the recording permanently available for viewing. Stars like The Rock and Serena Williams will stream today.
As for when the average user might get broadcast abilities, Live product manager Vadim Lavrusik wouldn’t say, but told me “We think this will be an awesome experience for both public figures and also users. We want to get feedback from both public figures and viewers as we evolve the product.”
Why should celebrities use Facebook Live instead of Periscope or Meerkat? Lavrusik tells me “Public figures already have fans on Facebook that they share to every single day.” Essentially, reach. With huge fan counts on Facebook, celebrities could see a wider audience there than on other networks.
Facebook Live, Periscope, and Meerkat (from left)
Another reason: videos don’t disappear. They’re immediately deleted on Meerkat and only live for 24 hours on Periscope (though you can save them to your camera roll). But Lavrusik tells me 53 percent of Facebook video views come from re-shares, which would probably happen after a broadcast ends.
Broadcasters can delete their videos if they want to keep them off-the-cuff and ephemeral, but otherwise the auto-published Live feed story will turn into a traditional video. That might make VIPs feel like recording Live streams is worth their time.
While Facebook has never been great at real-time content due to its filtered News Feed, it’s worked to make sure Live broadcasts reach viewers while they’re still in progress. Beyond appearing quickly in the feed to a celeb’s subscribers, Facebook will send push alerts to tune into the broadcast to users who’ve recently interacted with that Page. This should trigger big audiences without annoying people who Liked an actor or athlete years ago and don’t really care.
If Facebook can use the same reach that attracted celebrities in the first place to invade live-streaming, it could create tons of compelling video content to fill its feed and mask its ads.
While some users might be bitter that they can’t stream on Facebook Live yet, it could actually prevent users from getting sick of the feature. Periscope and Meerkat are plagued by users sending crappy “Hello world” or “Here’s my breakfast” streams that annoy their friends with notifications. Letting only celebrities use it first could teach users when they have a moment worth streaming.
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