Facebook has shared its living map of Live video broadcasters with the rest of the world. The interactive map, first introduced in April, went live globally on May 18.
In its current form, it's fairly straightforward, but the current functionality it offers can impart Live video with a significantly higher degree of cohesion than the nascent feature previously had.
The blue dots on the gray map depict locations where there is a live broadcasting. The dots appear and disappear on the fly, living and dying with each new and ended broadcast.
The map uses visual pulses on dots to call out the broadcasts with large audiences, those that number in the hundreds at least. Hovering over the dots with large audiences will trigger lines that connect the broadcast location with the positions of viewers.
Regardless of the size of the audience, hovering over a dot will also open a video preview window to whatever is being broadcast. The interactive map also has a side pane that serves up a short list of some of the most watched videos at the time.
So, what sorts of stuff goes on Live when the Eastern U.S. is asleep and the West is going to bed? Let's see, as of writing, there's a tone deaf guy with fierce eyes singing a Capella in New York, someone is giving a tutorial on how to roll an odd looking cigar, and someone oiling their eyebrows in Silicon Valley.
While the night owls and nightcappers in the states may not have had much going on, there were plenty of news and media broadcasts coming from the side of the world that's wide awake. And that's the sort of content Facebook is probably hoping for the most from its new Live video platform, as the company continues to try to establish itself as the best place to get news online.
"In the short time since we've rolled out Facebook Live to people and publishers around the world, we've seen incredible adoption, creativity and engagement," Facebook's Product Manager Daniel Danker said in April. "Media organizations are inventing new formats on Facebook and experimenting with ways to create more engaging experiences with their audiences."
