From today everyone will get Facebook Live. This means you can avoid the capture and upload cycle and simply stream live to your family and friends. Facebook are also making it easier to discover new live videos.
Founder Mark Zuckerberg says
“Live is like having a TV camera in your pocket. Anyone with a phone now has the power to broadcast to anyone in the world. When you interact live, you feel connected in a more personal way. This is a big shift in how we communicate, and it’s going to create new opportunities for people to come together.”
Streaming live will certainly chew through a lot of data and remember, uploads count. You’ll want to make sure you’re mobile plan has plenty of data if you plan on doing this frequently. This does however make it ridiculously easy to share an event like a birthday party or purchase of a new car, walking through the front door of a new home for the first time, live with the world.
Over time the world will likely come up with ways to mount phones in similar ways you mount Go-Pro cameras, so you can stream an event live for longer periods than you’d comfortably hold a phone.
This may change the way you accept event invites as well if you know the event will be streamed live. Imagine an invite to a inter-state birthday party would typically be a yes and requires days off work, travelling costs like flights or even just fuel and instead saying no. You could tune in, especially for the important bits like present opening and cake cutting and enjoy it remotely. With an aging population who are travel restricted, this could be more important than ever in keeping you connected.
With live TV traditionally being the domain of the TV, it would be interesting to see a smart TV app with Facebook Live as a channel. The volume of live content you see will certainly depend on the amount and type of friends you have on Facebook, but the ability to see who’s streaming live and leverage your existing likes as a recommendation engine to power what’s next, is an exciting prospect that could have legs.
