In a huge development, Facebook has just enabled live-stream video.
Live-streaming video is one of the hottest social media topics out there — and Facebook is muscling its way into the game.
Twitter and YouTube beware: Facebook may be late to the game when it comes to live-streaming, but it certainly has the heft to quickly make its presence known. Now, Facebook users can simply open their app and tap on “post” like one is making a status update, but now there’s an option to live-stream, according to a Christian Science Monitor report.
Once that option is selected, the user can provide a description of the stream and then hit “go live” to start, with an option to save the video once the stream is complete. Users can invite people to the stream, and once it is over it will stay as a regular post that can be shared with others.
Although Facebook may be late to the game, it is the largest social network and live-streaming is still in its infancy, so it should have no problem grabbing a big market share from its rivals. A total of 100 million hours of video are watched on Facebook every single day, so this seems like a natural next step for the social network.
There is one problem, of course: the big influencers when it comes to live-streaming are the celebrity live-streamers, not the average ordinary user, so Facebook will need to be able to figure out how to attract them to use the service.
The bizarre world of live-streaming has certainly gained a huge foothold in the social media world. Back in August 2014, the popular live-streaming site Twitch featured a beta fish in a tank “playing” Pokemon, with the game making a move depending on where in the tank the fish swam. More than 20,000 people at a time were watching that stream live. And more than 14 million people watch in February 2014 as 120,000 players played “TwitchPlaysPokemon.”
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