You may or may not have heard that Facebook has had a live streaming video service for several months now. It was only available to select celebrities, journalists and other public figures and they’ve just announced that it will soon be available to all users of the platform. Meerkat and Twitter’s Periscope will soon have even more competition as Facebook expands its streaming service because while Meerkat and Periscope function in their own applications only, Facebook will have the only live streaming video service to function in the application of a social media platform. It is currently being tested with a small percentage of American Facebook users and on iPhones only and then the plan is to roll out the service to all Facebook users including users of other types of mobile phones.
How Does It Work?
Users will be able to select live stream video in the same place where they opt to share a status, photo, video, et al. They will have the option to write descriptions and to select their audiences (i.e. public or friends). Data will be displayed during the broadcast including the number of live viewers, the names of the present viewers and comments that appear in real-time. When the streams finish, the videos will be saved to users’ timelines. There is not yet word on whether live video streaming will be available on Facebook Pages although it seems like a natural progression.
Video Marketing
This is another testament to the push for all things video in social media as well as elsewhere online. Facebook has simultaneously unveiled another new feature – the ability for users to share collage-like albums that may include a mix of both photos and video. In fact, Mark Zuckerberg has even recently announced that Facebook has upcoming plans to share revenues with video content creators based on views!
Opportunities
Even if the service will not be available for Facebook Pages, there are still definitely opportunities to benefit as marketers. There will be opportunities for collaborating with influencers online including bloggers, video bloggers, public figures and others to come up with live video streaming opportunities such as product trials, events, product placement… the possibilities are seemingly endless!
In addition to gearing up for live stream video opportunities, it is a great idea to start to develop your video marketing strategy (if you haven’t already) to know the who, what, where, when and why of your company’s video content because if things continue to evolve in this direction, we will all need to dabble in video to remain competitive in a digital world.
