Facebook has announced new features for Facebook Live bringing users more ways to discover, share, and interact with live video, and more ways to personalize your live broadcasts.
Today the company are rolling out the ability to go live in Facebook Groups and Facebook Events. Live in Groups allows you to broadcast to just the people in the Facebook Group, so you can go live in your family group, or share a workout plan in a fitness group. Live in Events means you can go live from a birthday party to allow those that can’t make it to join the fun, and a performer can go live backstage to the people who’ve RSVP-ed to the event to give them a sneak peak. You can even use Events to schedule a live Q&A session.
Interactive Features: Live Reactions, Replay Comments, Live Filters
Facebook Live is interactive and fun: Live reactions, replaying comments made while live and Live filters will make it even more so. Live Reactions makes it easy for your viewers to express their feelings in real time during a live broadcast. Using the same reactions launched in “News Feed”, viewers can select Love, Haha, Wow, Sad or Angry, and the reactions animate right on top of the video.
Live Reactions appear in real time and disappear quickly so broadcasters and other viewers can get a sense of how people are feeling at different points during the live video – it’s like hearing the crowd applaud and cheer. When your friend reacts to your video or to a video you are both watching together you’ll see their profile pic and a little starburst before their reaction appears.
“Live video on Facebook is truly interactive as broadcasters engage with their commenters and respond to their suggestions and questions. In fact, from initial data, we’ve seen that people comment more than 10 times more on Facebook Live videos than on regular videos. We want people watching the broadcast after the fact to feel “in” on the action. To achieve this, we will replay comments as they happened during the live broadcast when people watch it later.”
Discover more live videos: Invite Friends, Live Video Destination and Live Map
Today, the social network are also adding the option to send an invitation to a friend to watch with you right from the live video. Simply tap on the invite icon and select the friend you want to invite and they will receive a push notification with your invitation.
“People don’t want to miss out on great broadcasts that are live right now. So today, we’re starting to roll out a dedicated place on Facebook’s mobile app where you can discover live video that the world is talking about, live video from the friends and creators that matter most to you, and live video on topics you’re interested in. From that place, you can also search live and non-live videos, and choose to go live yourself. Simply tap on the new video icon in the app to navigate to this new space.”
Finally, if you want a visual way to explore public live broadcasts that are currently happening around the world, the company are today releasing a Facebook Live Map on desktop. People in more than 60 countries can now share live video, and the Facebook Live Map gives you a window into what’s happening in the world right now.
All of these features will be rolled out “over the coming weeks” to the Facebook app, so they may not appear immediately.
