A Small Experiment With Live Video on Social Platforms. Dogs Included.
For our second experiment we stuck to the theme of live coverage, but swapped out a chat app for live-streaming video, and politics for an event of a different breed — the Westminster Dog Show in New York City.
Looking at the current landscape for live-streaming news video on social, there are currently two clear leaders: the ephemeral, chatroom-style Periscope app and Facebook’s polished Live feature. Periscope has begun to be adopted by newsrooms to cover royal baby announcements, election results and protests in real time, but adoption of Facebook Live has remained somewhat tepid.
In an effort to start understanding each platform’s potential for news reporting and user interaction, we decided to record video from a single event using both tools, and to keep a close eye on differences between audience size and engagement, setup time, editorial workflow and the effort required to promote it.
For the uninitiated, here are the basic characteristics of each platform:
Periscope is a live-streaming video app acquired by Twitter and launched last March. Users can follow each other, and receive notifications when someone they’re connected to starts a new stream. Users can see the streams of strangers too, by zooming in anywhere on a world map and tapping on a stream. Within a live stream, a user can comment freely and tap on the screen to send the host appreciative “hearts”. Comments and hearts fade away within a few seconds, and all streams disappear from the app after 24 hours.
Facebook Live has been available to a limited number of users since its launch last August, mostly brands and high-profile users with verified profiles (regular users can watch live video). In January 2016, Facebook opened the platform to its US audience. Users who like a brand’s page or have followed a verified user — a celebrity or a journalist, for example — may see the live video playing in their feeds, or receive a notification when the stream starts. Users can comment or ask questions in the comments section of the post, and after the live stream ends the video is archived on that Facebook page.
We discussed spinning up some live video coverage from the Super Bowl earlier this month, but reporters on the Guardian US’s sports desk were spread too thin. So we held off until the Westminster Dog Show, which turned out to be a perfect event for experimentation since it was lighter in tone than a high-stakes news event. Pre-event coverage in the “benching” areas, where dogs and their owners prepare for the show, was complementary to yet not competitive with other Guardian US coverage. We also had a built-in following, with the personal Periscope account of Bryan Graham, a deputy sports editor, and with the Guardian US Sports Facebook page.
Before the Event
To prep editorially, we met with Bryan and Tom Lutz, editor of Guardian US Sports, a few days before the event. We discussed potential themes for coverage, the optimal length of the streams and any technical considerations. The day of the event, Bryan took about 20 minutes to write up a simple introductory script for the live streams, and it worked perfectly.
Technical setup was pretty simple for both, but there were one or two more hoops to jump through for Facebook Live. Since we were launching the stream from the Guardian US Sports page, everyone involved needed the correct permissions to monitor progress. Also, Bryan’s iPhone 5 didn’t show the live stream option, so we lent him a lab phone running a more recent version of iOS, and he was able to start a stream.
The audience development team helped us with a light promotional plan on Facebook and Twitter, which largely consisted of a retweet about the Periscope stream from the Guardian US Sports account, and both a preview and a “live now” post on Facebook for the video stream.
During the Event
On the night of the dog show, Bryan said he found it a challenge to fit in two live stream broadcasts before liveblogging the big event, and a bit “out of the routine”. In retrospect, he told us, he could have pre-written some coverage for the liveblog to free up time for more live streaming, since the sequence of events is more predictable at the dog show than at other events.
On Periscope, plenty of viewers interacted with Bryan during the stream. He had experimented with Periscope on his own previously and built up a following of 1,089 users. “The people who were there were really enthusiastic,” Bryan said. “Those are the kind of audiences you see with boxing, MMA or adventure sports — the people who are there are very passionate about it.”
Their passion was clear in many of the comments and questions in the live stream, including: “Where is the bichon frise?”, “Thank you!!! This has been super fun!!”, “Any English bulldog?”, “Thank you for showing this. It’s crazy packed!”, and “Nooooooo” when Bryan announced he was ending the Periscope.
We asked Bryan if the commenting was distracting. Far from it, he said: “It’s the same as when you’re managing a liveblog and someone tweets at you or sends an email. Responding to them gets you closer to the end. It adds a beat to it, like a piece of music. It gets you off the high wire for a minute.”
It was also clear that viewers wanted the scenery to change a lot during the live stream. “Whenever we got up to a really good dog, like a komondor, a Spanish water dog, or the poodles and the terriers, there would be a flashpoint of comments. The users wanted fresh pictures.”
The Facebook Live setup was “nearly identical”, with a few differences in audience size and engagement. The Periscope stream had 170 viewers, compared to Facebook’s 385 viewers. However many of the Periscope viewers commented and “hearted” Bryan’s stream, whereas only one viewer posted a comment to the Facebook stream, tagging another Facebook friend who she thought might like the coverage.
Neither of those things changed the experience for Bryan. “To be perfectly honest, if there were five people in there or 5,000, I probably wouldn’t approach it any differently. Especially considering that Facebook Live video is archived and can be replayed. Everyone in the broadcast has made a choice to be there and can leave whenever they want.”
Recommendations
Build your following before you decide to live stream. We chose to stream from Bryan’s personal Periscope account, where he had more than a thousand followers. We also chose to stream from the Guardian US Sports Facebook page, which currently has 30,000 likes.
Consider what’s more important to your story: engagement or reach. In our small experiment, we noticed that the audience was smaller on Periscope with a total of 170 viewers, but user engagement was high. The Facebook Live stream had 385 views, but only one comment.
Decide whether you will need the broadcast to be replayed later. On Periscope, you can save the video file to your device, but it won’t be discoverable on Periscope after 24 hours. Facebook Live video is archived on the page, and can be replayed or embedded elsewhere.
Remain flexible. Our experiment was intended to span the two nights of the dog show, but the first night was too crowded for Bryan to stream. We adapted the experiment to include both streams on the second night, so we could still include both platforms in the test.
Also, here are some more tips for Periscoping and tips for using Facebook Live that are worth checking out before you experiment on either platform.
For more insights into the experiment, you can read the Nieman Lab’s take on it here.
Thoughts? Questions? Email us anytime at innovationlab@theguardian.com.
