Facebook’s Live Video Updates

Facebook has launched a dedicated hub for watching Live and recorded videos in its mobile app with a Video tab taking over Messenger’s centre spot in the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen, turning Facebook into a destination for discovering videos categorized by topic beyond stumbling across them in the feed.

You can initiate live streaming inside groups and events, real-time reactions, and the possibility to watch a video at the same time with a friend. On top of that, a live map that allows users to share video is now available in no less than 60 countries. The updated feature will be immensely useful to travel marketers, who could use the live service for Q&A-sessions on topics, offering an immersive chance to share their story.

In a move that's similar to Periscope, Facebook 'reactions' will also be coming to Live and will be displayed on top of the video, scrolling across the screen. The new features also include Instagram-inspired filters and users will also get to doodle onto live video. Facebook hopes the new feature will make it easier to find videos in general rather than just scrolling across them in a feed, which has been the case in the past.

Facebook says that its initial data shows that people comment more than 10 times on Facebook Live videos than on regular videos. And now, when users click one of Facebook's Reaction buttons in real-time, it will create a little animation with their profile picture and then their chosen response on screen.

Will Cathcart, Facebook's vice president of product management says, "As people get better cameras in their phones that can take better pictures and video, we've sought more and more to make video a well-supported part of Facebook. For example, if people 'love' something, you'll see a flurry of hearts in the video. We've introduced this so everyone can see all the reactions from the crowd at the same time," he tells Newsbeat. And if you're watching the video later - after the live session is over - then you'll see comments appear over time, as they happened. This will help people to make sense of things like why the broadcaster answered a question."

“With Live, we want to feature whatever the users are most interested in seeing, whether that's content from Facebook or elsewhere. A video has become a big part of Facebook and we expect that will be the same with Live. We do think that it will provide an opportunity for rich native mobile experiences that can unlock a lot more content consumption," Will further added.

Since Facebook launched Live last year, people have created more than 670,000 live streams which have garnered over 12.6 billion views, according to data from the video intelligence software company Tubular Labs. That's up from 246,000 live streams with over 5.7 billion views at the beginning of March.

Facebook's live product now looks a lot more like existing offerings from Snapchat, Periscope, and Meerkat. However, Facebook has the advantage of its colossal scale; more than 1.5 billion people already use the social network which means a huge payout too.

The concept of the live digital video is enormously attractive to advertisers because its audiences are more engaged and there's more real-time context (for example, streams from sporting events or award shows). The sense of immediacy and engagement of Live videos could provide the same sort of catnip to brands as Snapchat's "Live" stories, sponsored Lenses, and geo filters, while being capable of reaching many more users (with more data on each one).

As more advertisers shift their budgets from television to the internet, Live has enormous revenue potential.