Facebook Lets The Public Go Live With New Feature
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MIAMI (CBSMiami) -- Everyone in your Facebook feed is about to become a broadcaster.
Facebook has finally opened up its live video broadcast feature to more people.
Right now, everyone with an iPhone in the U.S. can stream live video to their friends on Facebook - right from the phone.The network is still working on a version for Android.
You'll find it inside the status update, just click the icon of a person with a broadcast signal. You create a title and choose who you want to see it. When you're ready, go live.
Friends can comment in real-time and when they do, you can answer them or say hello. That's the point of live video, to be able to interact with questions and comments in real time. You can also like a comment. You can also see how many people are watching.
The concept is the same as Twitter's Periscope, but the comments do not pop up on top of the video. On Facebook, it all just sits under the broadcast.
Facebook has been testing and gradually rolling out live video for the past five months, as it tries to play catch up to Twitter's more-popular Periscope app.
Meerkat started the live streaming buzz first when it launched last year. But the biggest difference is that Facebook videos will live forever to be watched by your friends who missed it live, unless you delete it.
On Periscope, the videos last only about a day before they vanish. On Meerkat, the iPhone app has the choice to save a stream to your profile.
Meerkat has some neat tools, like being able to let a friend jump into a broadcast from their phone, but most people abandoned the app and are just using Periscope these days.
