The Year of Live Video
In 2016, the major social platforms added live video. In 2017, will users tune in?
2016 was the year of live video. The biggest headliner, of course, is Facebook Live. In early 2016, Facebook struck deals with media companies to compensate them for broadcasting on Facebook Live. (NPR is one such partner.) The experience has been a rollercoaster for media companies as Facebook continues to tweak how live video is treated in their news feed algorithm and as they continue to iterate on the product itself. More critically, Facebook is still working out how partners can monetize Facebook Live. (Check out what NPR has learned from experimenting on Facebook Live.)
Elsewhere, live video continued to be baked into existing popular social platforms. Twitter continues to merge Periscope into its platform, though with little success. Just this month, Twitter released updates to its iOS and Android apps that allow users to broadcast live video directly to the platform. The jury is still out on whether it’s catching on or not.
In August Instagram took inspiration from the success of Snapchat, launching Instagram Stories. Three months later, live video was integrated into Stories.
The funny thing is, live video isn’t actually new. Anyone remember Justin.TV? The site launched in 2007 and popularized “lifecasting” movement. YouTube has had live streaming as a part of it’s offerings for many years, too.
While there are already many newsworthy events that users themselves have broadcasted on Facebook Live, how often have you been notified that a friend or family member has begun broadcasting live video on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram? How many of your non-journalism or social media industry friends have told you about a cool live video they’ve watched on a social platform? This is what I’m most interested in.
Given that it’s taken almost a decade to catch on in a big way, will casual users really take to live video, not just from a consumption point-of-view, but also from as video creators? If Facebook has it’s way, 2017 will be the year that my sister finally “goes live.”
