On Facebook, everyone can be a star — at least for those businesses and personalities with verified pages.
Back in August, the leading social media service introduced its Live program for celebrities using its Facebook Mentions platform. This allowed thousands of Hollywood actors and musicians, athletes, online influencers, and even politicians to connect with their millions-strong fanbase.
Since then, Facebook has slowly but surely rolled out Live to select verified Pages so that page owners could also join in on the fun of having their followers behind-the-scenes live video access. Now Facebook Live isn't just available to celebrities or select pages, it's available for all verified pages so sports teams, media companies, brands, and many others can make announcements, share live breaking news updates, conducts Q&As, and more.
There are a few caveats, however, The program is currently available to Facebook users on iOS, and of course, on verified pages only. (It isn't difficult to verify a page anyway though.) Beyond that, broadcasting a live video stream is an easy process. Just like making a regular post, users just tap the "Publish" button and select "Live Video" from the drop-down menu. From there, it's as quick as "lights, camera, action!"
Broadcasters will be able to see how many people are in their audience along with the names of verified users and Pages also tuned into their stream. On the other end of the channel, viewers can also comment during in the moment at any time during a Live broadcast.
As Facebook is fond of doing, the company's Live platform isn't necessarily an innovative feature. It's been done long before by Meerkat and Twitter's Periscope. The difference between Live and its competitors is that a Live broadcast on Facebook will permanently live on verified Pages (unless they are deleted of course just like any other post). That allows followers of a Page to catch up to any Live broadcasts that they may have missed.
With Facebook's billion-plus strong user base, its Live platform may just end up overtaking Meerkat and Periscope. However, Facebook's other copycat features like Poke haven't worked out too well for the company either. As with all things tech, we'll have to wait and watch to see how things pan out.
