Facebook Should Roll Out Live Video to More Pages

-POP (1)Video is one of the biggest things happening in the world of Facebook. Video content will continue to grow over the next few years. This is evident by Periscope and to some extent Meerkat. People are wanting to watch live video from people and brands they follow. It seems its a race to see who will conquer the market first. In my opinion there are three contenders. They are Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Out of the three I think Facebook has the best chance of succeeding. I say this because it’s the largest social network and has the most active users. While the Pericsope app is a great app, it’s limited due to the number of active Twitter users. Lastly, with YouTube you don’t think live video. It’s previously recorded content you can watch over and over.

That being said I have one BIG issue with the Live video on Facebook. The general public has access to the service without any restrictions (I believe it’s rolled out worldwide). Brands/Pages on the other hand have to be a public figure or a verified page to use the service through the Mentions app. So if you aren’t verified or a famous person you’re out of luck.

This could be a definite game changer for small business. An easy way to do live video. The uses are pretty endless. They could include: New product demo, trade show reporting, product launches, messages from founders and the list goes on and on. If used right it could be a powerful tool. Unlike other services, you could notify your fans as soon as you go live.

After the event the video will be saved so other people can watch it. A few of the other broadcast apps, like Periscope, doesn’t have a way to save your video for later viewing. There are times when you want to have a live event with no recording. For the most part you want a record of it to store.

Will Facebook roll out to more pages? It should be assumed that it will happen. Facebook gets in no hurry to roll out features.  This could be to help with server traffic or to keep track of bugs. Either way I think it will be a feature this year. The longer they wait the more other companies can catch up and become the default live video servcie.

Tim is the founder of Element33. A social media agency specializing in education, management and strategy for small businesses. He comes from a traditional marketing agency but has embraced all things digital. He considers himself a marketing nerd and believes that all marketing is tied together. This means no matter what silo you are in, social, email, seach, etc, changes in one will affect the other!

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