Facebook seems to be keeping up with its fight with YouTube for the hearts and minds and content of YouTube’s creators.
On Friday, June 23, Facebook announced that they will be rolling out a mobile app for video creators later this year, which will allow them to produce and publish live and on-demand videos to the social network. This lets Facebook users keep up with their fans across Facebook, Instagram and Messenger, as well as track their videos’ performance.
Facebook even announced the app at VidCon, YouTube rolled out its own app for creators called YouTube Creator Studio in 2014.
Facebook launching app for video creators later this year (its version of YouTube’s Creator Studio) pic.twitter.com/ngtLNvYYjV
— Tim Peterson (@petersontee) June 23, 2017
The to-be-named Facebook app will be a revamped version of Facebook’s existing Mentions app, which caters to celebrities and other public figures with large fan bases and where where Facebook first made Facebook Live available. Those who are already Mentions users are able to upgrade automatically to the new app when it becomes available, accordidng to Daniel Danker, the Facebook product management.
The Creator app breaks down into three areas:
- video creation
- fan engagement
- video analytics
The Creator will open, Snapchat-style, to a camera screen when launched.
Creators can use the app to stream a live broadcast or record an on-demand video. That’s pretty basic, and is already something you can do through Mentions and Facebook’s app for normal people, but the creator app adds bells and whistles.
Creators will even be able to add intro and outro segments to their live broadcasts, as well as post custom stickers that viewers can then users when interacting with the broadcast. Facebook is extending its new Snapchat-esque frames to the creator app, which allows creators to add them as overlays to their videos.
The app even has a tab for creators to reply to their fans across Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. There is an insights tab that lets creators track how their videos are performing on Facebook.