At this point, many of us have noticed that Facebook is putting a lot of effort into their video platform, Facebook Live.
There was an announcement made by the company that there is a new set of features that are being added to Facebook Live. Facebook said that they’ll be making Live one of the primary tabs in the mobile app which will be replacing the Messages icon. The fact that Facebook would place Live up front with the News Feed, Notifications and Friend Requests tells us that they’re pretty serious about winning the live video battle with Twitter/Periscope.
There are a number of other new features and upgrades that the company is rolling out, some which are very similar to what Periscope users are familiar with, and others that extend Facebook Live beyond what Periscope is offering.
Some of the features include:
- Users will be able to stream live video into Facebook Groups and Events, rather than broadcasting to all Facebook friends.
- Facebook Live videos include the same Reactions that rolled out for posts earlier this year. This gives viewers the ability to show how they feel about a video with the reaction emoticons.
- The reactions will be appearing in real time and disappear quickly. This will give broadcaster and viewers the sense of how people react during different points of the video.
- Replays of Facebook Live videos are going to show comments as they happened during the live broadcast.
- There will be five new filters for live videos which makes i possible for a broadcaster to doodle or draw on their live video as it’s being broadcast.
The boadcaster can even send invites by tapping on the newly added invite icon and selecting friends.
There are two new map features for live video – one for Facebook’s mobile app as well as another that’s rolling out on desktop.
The Facebook Live Map desktop feature is rolling out to 60 countries. This makes it possible to explore Facebook Live broadcasts that is happening in different parts of the world.
There will be two new metrics added to Facebook Live: “Live Broadcast Audience” data to count the total number of those watching during a live broadcast. There is also a “Viewers During Live Broadcast,” which is a visual representations tat shows the number of people watching during different moments through the broadcast.
They will be available in Page Insights. They can even be accessed from a user’s video library by clicking the lie video and going to the new Live Broadcast Audience tab