Facebook is making
some updates to its Live video platform which should streamline the process of
getting a stream set up and in front of the widest possible audience. The
company notes in a blog post that the daily average of Live streams from
verified Pages is up 1.5x this year over the past year. In addition to the
updates to the Live API, Facebook has also announced that they’re testing a
rewind feature for the Live video, something that has previously been
unavailable.
Facebook is going to begin allowing Live videos to be
“crossposted” to multiple Pages at the same time. That means if an organization
or publisher has multiple Pages where a single Facebook Live video could be
featured, they’ll be able to send it to all of them live as an original post without
having to re-share one sent by the main account manually. The crossposting
feature will allow publishers to more easily reach broader audiences without
going through a bunch of unnecessary steps. It’s something publishers are
already able to do with pre-recorded videos, so porting the feature over to
Facebook Live makes a good deal of sense.
Crossposting to multiple accounts as original posts.
Another feature that should make things easier for creators
and publishers on the platform is what’s called a persistent stream key. These
keys are a part of the streaming setup process and have previously been tied to
the each new streaming session.
Now, what has made this really frustrating for users has
been coordinating this when their Facebook Live stream has a problem and they
have to start a new session, a process which has — in the past — automatically
created a new stream key which has then had to be copied and sent over to
production teams.
With this new persistent option, these production teams will
know the stream key tied to an account in advance and won’t have to worry about
coordinating this step in the process should anything go awry.
One particularly exciting (yet exceedingly basic) feature
that has been sorely missing from Facebook Live has been the ability to rewind
live footage. A clear highlight of the medium is the ability to watch something
as it unfolds in real time; consumers being able to immediately look back at
things that may have surprised them is a key functionality. It’s been something
YouTube live viewers have been able to do for a while that has always felt
absent from Facebook.
Facebook Rewind is being tested currently and the company
hopes to roll it out for all users soon. Persistent stream keys and
crossposting functionality are rolling out today.
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