If you want to livestream your life, you have no shortage of options nowadays: Meerkat, Twitter’s Periscope, Hang w/, and now Facebook. Well, if you’re rich and famous, anyway.
Starting today, public figures can now stream video using a new, creatively-named ‘Live’ feature in Facebook Mentions.
If you haven’t heard of that app before, don’t feel too bad: it’s an iOS-only app built so famous people like athletes, musicians, politicians and other celebrities to communicate directly with their fans. You need to be one of the select few verified users for it to work at all.
Once a stream begins from a celebrity you follow, the video will show up directly on your News Feed (in addition to their own Pages). If you’ve recently interacted with a celebrity’s posts, you might even see a notification alerting you of a new stream.
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As with any other video, you can comment, like or share the streams with your friends. It’s a bit more interactive however, as it’ll alert you when your friends and other celebrities are watching.
Celebrities will also be able to reply to comments, or hide the more annoying ones. And once the stream is over, the video will be available to watch on the celebrity’s Page.
Several celebrities are already preppin for upcoming livestreams streams. Facebook says you should look out for content from: Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Serena Williams, Luke Bryan, Ricardo Kaka, Ashley Tisdale, Lester Holt, Martha Stewart and Michael Bublé, among others.
It’s an interesting if not entirely surprising move by Facebook. The company likely wants to leverage both its ubiquity and its ever-increasing amount of video content to help establish itself as a go-to destination for live news from public figures.
We wouldn’t be surprised if this were just a sign of things to come too – it seems like just a matter of time until Facebook introduces its own livestreaming alternative for the general populace.
If you happen to be rich and famous, you can try it out by downloading the newest version of the Mentions app from the iOS App Store.
➤ Connect with Public Figures Through Live [Facebook]
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