The Live Era
Why Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat are finally embracing Live
When we look back in five years on the products built today, we’ll refer to this as the Live Era — the era of social software built for real-world moments.
Recently, Twitter became the first social platform to acquire NFL streaming rights.
Phase one of social media was all about getting everyone online and connected. Phase two is now about connecting the real world with the digital world.
Three new trends are driving our Live Era (and a few less timely ones I may write about later):
- Video on mobile finally works at scale
- Social networks have left us craving authenticity
- Offline and online experiences are starting to converge
You can see examples of Live in Facebook, Twitter, Periscope and Snapchat. While I spend a lot of time thinking about Live through the lens of Sports Feed, these trends are universal — not just relevant to sporting events. With Live, anyone can share their unique perspective in real-time as participants of both the big: awards shows, sports games, music festivals — and the small: birthdays, graduations, weddings.
1. Mobile video has reached scale
- The camera is the new keyboard. Rather than type our thoughts we communicate visually through photos and videos on messaging apps like Snapchat and WhatsApp. Content and communication is converging — the selfie is both a memory and a message.
- With the rise of messaging, mobile video is no longer constrained to only entertainment or video conferencing — video is now a social medium.
- But what’s causing the acceleration? Vertical video viewing. Watching vertically full-screen means you don’t have to rotate your device. Which means video finally feels made for mobile. And as more video capture happens on mobile, the viewing experience on mobile gets better.
Live starts with capturing a moment and video is the best medium for it. Thanks to messaging and full-screen vertical playback, millions of mobile users are now savvy video creators and consumers. Mobile video is a foundational layer for Live and it’s finally here at scale.
2. Authenticity is in short supply
“I would expect that next year, people will share twice as much information as they share this year, and next year, they will be sharing twice as much as they did the year before” — Mark Zuckerberg, 2008
- Zuckerberg’s Law — an observation that the amount of information people share online doubles yearly— may not hold true eight years later, but it’s hard to argue we live in a world of social abundance.
- A social media surplus encourages platforms to develop finely tuned algorithms which sift through and re-order our feeds based on content-level signals such as likes and clicks.
- These algorithmic filters, while useful, create a feedback loop. Whatever plays well to the algorithm will be seen more. The result? Our social home screen is now a “best of” awards ceremony.
- The continued push towards filtered feeds will create greater demand for new ways to be authentic online.
Live is as much about immediacy as it is authenticity. We share a common understanding of content created in the moment: it’s unfiltered and spontaneous. In a world of scripted social media, live’s value proposition is double: both consumption and creation happen in real-time. Live will help fill the demand for authenticity created by algorithmic filtering.
3. Offline convergence is up for grabs
- What happens when you connect billions of people with mobile computers over a high speed network? A more interesting follow-up: what happens when the network disappears? When there is no distinction of physical and virtual worlds?
- Snapchat Live is a great example of a company investing heavily to converge offline and online:
- Solving offline/online singularity is probably a Snapchat BHAG. It certainly helps explain the launch of Story Explorer — a new Computer Vision technology (built by ex-Stanford AI researchers) which stitches together videos captured nearby each other. Not to mention the acquisition of Vergence Labs — a hardware startup building a Google Glass-like product with built-in camera sensors.
Offline convergence is a massive opportunity up for grabs and live is the perfect attack vector: Live events create a natural context for people to share the world around them. Additionally, an event is a time of fun and play — a space to try new things. Live products can drive greater adoption of wearables, beacons and other hardware key to convergence. This in turn will unlock new monetization opportunities. The first company to build a mass appeal Live product will be best positioned to ultimately win offline.
The market conditions for Live are just right. Mobile video is nearly as pervasive as photos, people are looking for new ways to connect online authentically and the race for offline convergence is underway.
What does the map of Live look like today? How can we create frameworks to better understand the underlying principles? What lessons can we leverage from other disciplines? What happened to Meerkat? These are topics for future posts.
Thanks to Tyler Willis, shaherose, Garrett Dodge, Shai Goldman & Shamir Allibhai for feedback on early drafts.
