Facebook Live Video: New Features You Should Know About

Last month, Facebook Live gave us the laugh that was heard around the world by more than 155 million people. Who would have thought that live streaming yourself putting on a Chewbacca mask would go viral? Candace Payne, who picked up the mask as a birthday gift to herself and partially to her 2 kids, was certainly surprised. Her video has become the most watched Facebook Live video ever, beating out Buzzfeed’s exploding watermelon, and basically became a mini-celebrity overnight by racking up over 700K fans. When asked why she chose Facebook Live over current live-streaming options like Periscope, she replied how Facebook already had built-in followers and it was a natural transition to share with the people she knows. With successes like Candace’s, Facebook has been putting more efforts into their platform and have added on an expansion of new updates – sometimes making it hard to keep up.

1. A Video Content Hub. Facebook generated 8 billion video views on average per day during 2015. Surely this stat has increased since Facebook Live was introduced and they intend to take full advantage it. With this hub, video will take over Messenger’s place in the bottom navigation bar of the Facebook mobile app. Users can then discover new content by topic and also search live & non-live videos.

2. Events and Groups have the ability to ‘go live’. This will let users share and broadcast their experiences with their closest friends, family, and communities of people they care about most, therefore enabling them to connect more deeply.

3. Live Reactions & Replay Comments. Live reactions incorporates the already existing Facebook’s six reaction emojis and makes it easier for viewers to express themselves better in real-time. As the video progresses, these reactions fly across the screen and broadcasters are able to better understand how their current viewers are feeling and respond appropriately. According to Facebook’s data, people are commenting 10 times more often on live streaming vids than regular ones – and in order for people to get a feel of how people responded during the broadcast there’s the ability to replay comments. In other words, this means people will be able to see comments replay as they occurred during the live stream.

4. Personalize broadcasts with Filters & Doodles. Taking on more of a Snapchat-esque feel, broadcasters will have the ability to use 5 live color filters which can be applied immediately during the live video and they will also have the ability to draw or doodle.

5. Invite Friends. Viewers can notify their friends to join in the audience simply by opting to send an invitation. Once they have tapped the invite button and selected their friends to invite, their friends will receive a push notification.

How will Facebook Live videos’ performance be measured? Not only will we be able to report on the usual metrics like unique viewers, average % completion rate, and minutes viewed, but there are also metrics to help better understand live viewership.

Peak Concurrent Viewers: This is the highest number of concurrent viewers watching the video while it was live

Viewers During Live Broadcast: A visual representation of the number of viewers during each moment of the live broadcast

And as always, Facebook will continue to improve these metrics as publishers and creators experiment with live video content.

*ALL IMAGES SOURCED FROM FACEBOOK