Did you know that over 900 million people are connected to “public figures” on Facebook? Facebook recently announced the launch of a new mobile video live streaming feature called Live. Celebrities, politicians, athletes and general influencers have already been using the Facebook Mentions application only available to people with a verified page.
Facebook touts this new Live feature as a way for public figures to share live video from Mentions with their fans on Facebook. Similar to Periscope, Meerkat, NomadCast, Blab.im, Ustream and the hundreds of other mobile and live streaming applications already out there, people can share live video to showcase behind the scenes exclusive content, share announcements or even the boring video of their cat.
The difference in the way Facebook launched the Mentions app as well as the new live streaming service is it is only available to a special group of people. This as you can imagine has some who want to get their hands on it fired up.
Having spent 20 years working in technology, building, launching and sustaining technology for business, I can understand the decision made by Facebook. It would be crazy for any business to launch such a bandwidth hog type of service such as live streaming to a billion people user base like Facebook has.
Facebook has a lot more to worry about than if they tick off a few social media influencers who are upset they want to get their hands on the product at the same time as the celebrities. They are likely more concerned about real business concerns such as performance, scalability, sustainability, monetization, feature set testing and the list goes on.
Take a listen to the 156th episode of the Social Zoom Factor podcast for my thoughts on this new application and where I think it's headed. I discuss thoughts on why Facebook chose this approach for launch and why we all just need to find some patience and deal with it. A great reminder of why brands and marketers should never build your business entirely on rented land. You control nothing about Facebook's decisions, like it or not.
In this 10 Minute Episode…
- Quick overview of the Facebook Mentions and new feature, Live – Mobile Live Streaming Application
- Facebook's approach to launching the live video streaming service and Mentions applications only to celebrities
- A couple key features that will set Facebook Live apart from some of its competition
Supporting Resources:
- 10 Business Use Cases for Mobile Broadcast and Live Video Streaming – Periscope, Meerkat (episode 136)
- Influencer Marketing in a Nutshell
- Influencer Marketing Does Not Equal Free Earned Media
- Don't Build Your Business on Rented Social Media and Facebook Land
- 15 Things Smart Marketers Never do On Facebook
- Digital Body Language: 105 Factors Impacting Your Personal and Business Brand (white paper)
- Do You Really Know Your Audience? (episode 4)
- Social Trust Factor: Ignite Results with Trust and Authority (episode 20)
- Brand Humanization in a Nutshell (episode 5)
- How to Convert Facebook Personal Profile to Business Page (blog post)
