Facebook has released live video for verified pages earlier this year. Now they have released the service to the masses! Prior you had to be using the Facebook Mentions app. In their current roll out to a small percentage of iPhone users. You can now broadcast things that are important to you and your family/friends.
“To share live video, tap on Update Status and then select the Live Video icon. You can write a quick description and choose the audience that you want to share with before going live. During your broadcast, you’ll see the number of live viewers, the names of friends who are tuning in, and a real-time stream of comments. When you end your broadcast, it will be saved on your Timeline like any other video, which you can then delete or keep for your friends to watch later.”
Your videos and those of public figures will be easily discoverable in the news feed. Once you watch a video you will be given the option to subscribe to that persons broadcasts. Then you will be notified once they go live in future videos. This is an answer to Merkat and Periscope by Tiwtter. Facebook had to get into the live video market. Why? Over the weekend I was watching Good Morning America Saturday. They were doing live Pericope to show behind the scenes of the show in real time.
Facebook also rolled out a new photo feature quietly too. I have seen Collages in my new feed but only recently rolled out to me. Collages is a “smart” way to share pictures. When you open your photos on the Facebook app. It will suggest groupings of pictures taken in the same location. This to me is a great feature. If you’re out you don’t want to choose pictures to post.
“When you tap on Photo, you’ll see recent moments from your camera roll organized into collages based on when and where you took them. You can edit your collage by adding, removing or re-arranging the photos and videos that you want to include. When you’re done, you can add a title to the collage before sharing. Collages will begin rolling out on iPhone today (Dec 3) and will be available on Android early next year”
How this affects your business. These features will be coming to pages at some point. Once they test the bandwidth of video, it should be on pages. You can now host your live streaming on Facebook and host the video file for future reference or views from fans. Currently the videos are not live for longer than 24 hours on Periscope.
The collages would be a great new way to show pictures. It will not be as helpful for pages as people but I still think it would be great for events you may host. Time will tell when these features come to pages. Usually when things are rolled out to the public it eventually comes to pages!
