Facebook Rolls Out Live Video Broadcasting

Look out Periscope, ‘Facebook Live’ now supports live video broadcasting.

Facebook's new live video broadcasting interface.

During its latest wave of innovation, Facebook rolled out its live video broadcasting capabilities for both iOS and Android mobile users.

While the live video broadcasting capabilities first launched in August, Facebook Live was only available for celebrities to use. Since then, the immensely popular social media platform has rolled out Facebook Live slowly but surely, expanding usage from select celebrities to all verified accounts. All iOS users were given live video streaming capabilities in January, and Android users were finally granted access last week.

While Facebook has always been the social media king for sharing posts, photos and recorded videos, it did not have the instantaneous feel that the live video broadcasting app Periscope brings to Twitter’s digital portfolio.

With Facebook Live, the social media platform has truly embraced the old saying, “If you can’t beat them, join them.”

The roll-out of Facebook Live comes amid a new wave of new features for the social media platform. In addition to live video, Facebook recently unveiled “reactions,” a new feature that allows users to do more than merely like a post. With this new feature, users can react to posts by choosing an emoji that represents love, amusement, surprise, sadness or anger.

But just how successful can Facebook Live become? While Facebook brings a trusted brand name to their service, other live video broadcasting apps such as Periscope already dominate the market. Periscope is established and has a large following. While it is under the Twitter umbrella, it can still work independently from the tweeting app, which has both pros and cons. And we should not forget that Periscope is battle-tested, having all but driven the once-popular live video broadcasting app Meerket into the shadows.

So what do you think? Is Facebook Live going to catch on, or will it fade into irrelevancy as quickly as it appeared? Voice your opinion below in the comment section!

 

Jonathan Reistad
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