Will Celebrities Broadcast Live Video?
It is an exciting time in live video, with Facebook and Twitter betting big on broadcasting apps. Live video is a great way for users to share their personal moments with friends and followers, but, may not be the platform for top celebrities, athletes and influencers to interact live with their fans.
Unedited live broadcasts are a reputation risk
We all know that “the Internet remembers forever”. As exciting as it sounds, unedited live broadcasts are a risk to the reputation of the celebrity. A word or phrase said in the spur of moment could be easily misinterpreted by diverse global cultures and mindsets, not to mention people looking to flare up controversies. So much depends on the celebrity’s state of mind at the time of live broadcast that a raw, unedited, live video stream could cause significant damage to a celebrity’s image and reputation. This is every PR agent’s worst nightmare!
Zero incentive for celebrity to go live
I’m reminded of Cuba Gooding Jr’s famous line to Tom Cruise in the movie Jerry Maguire — “Show me the money”. Big social networks like Facebook and Twitter can afford to pay some cash for celebrities to broadcast, but how long can they keep doing it? Ultimately, the live video services will be completely integrated into their respective social networks with zero monetary incentive for celebrities to go live.
Celebrities cannot control marketing opportunities
Most of the top celebrities have great brand relationships, and would love to monetize their hard earned “celebrity” status. Facebook and Twitters’ live video services do not offer the opportunities for a celebrity to take control of their marketing opportunities.
Fan abuse is a constant threat
The most important aspect of live video broadcast is fan interaction. Allowing fans to text while celebrity is broadcasting could lead to fans abusing celebrities in public eye. There are absolutely zero controls given to the celebrity to pick the fan messages they want to interact. Dealing with fan abuse could distract and cause quite a bit of anxiety to the celebrity during a live broadcast.
Impractical to interact with fans’ messages during broadcast
Imagine Katy Perry doing a live video broadcast, with 5% of her 70M+ followers tuned into the session. Even if 1% of her 3.5M+ fans send messages to interact, how on earth can she read and pick the questions to respond from 35,000 messages flying on her mobile screen? That is, assuming that her manager allows her to broadcast using front facing camera, which is quite unlikely.
There is no multicast on the internet
As always-connected Americans with all-you-can-eat data plans, we take the internet for granted. One of the major assumptions made by the social networks is that every user has the bandwidth to watch live streams as they are happening. Unfortunately, multicast does not exist on the internet for efficient broadcasting, and most of the users in the world have to connect with unicast networks to get their streams. Depending on users’ bandwidth, this could lead to awful buffering delays, unsynchronized celebrity responses to fan messages, and in many countries outside the USA, additional mobile data charges.
“I am a big fan of celebrity-fan video interactions on mobile devices, but I do not believe the solutions currently in the market address the celebrity requirements to encourage them to video interact with fans. As an entrepreneur, I see a great opportunity to create THE platform for celebrities to “FaceTime” with fans, present a synchronized celebrity interaction experience that fans can watch and share on their own timelines while being conscious of their mobile data plans. And most importantly, let celebrities control, own and sell the real-estate around their fan interaction sessions.” — Srini Dharmaji, CEO of StarTime
This article was originally written by StarTime’s CEO Srini Dharmaji.
