As long as you have wifi or a good connection, you can be the star or the director, record what is happening, broadcast to your network, from your chosen ‘live studio’ at home or in the office or wherever, for up to 30 minutes. It will then appear on your feed.
You can invite friends in to see the live recording. People will be able to search for video within Facebook and even see where broadcasting is happening in real time – Facebook live. And we can bookmark our favourite broadcasters as we do in Youtube. There is a Facebook Live Community page on Facebook here. Periscope and Meercat will feel that they have been copied and their technologies swallowed up. Facebook gets to stay ahead of some perceived competition for attention, but was that competition actually eating in to their space?
Facebook obviously feels that we all want to watch video rather than read text comments, images or infographics, but it does mean we have to listen and have wifi or a good data deal. Maybe Mark Zuckerberg thinks video is awsome, but do we really want it ? Certainly it adds something to the Facebook offering and maybe keeps that fresh. Plus we can take it or leave it. But is it just another way of bringing commercials to the feed ? Facebook is offering a Premium service and customisation, so are they trying to let companies bring TV adverts to a captive audience – it sounds so familiar. People switched from TV to Facebook and maybe they will do the same to the next new thing, if they feel that Facebook is pushing commercial adverts in to their personal space, just to make more money. Meantime people will initially have a lot of fun publishing endless, mostly unneeded or unwanted video. It is unlikely we will see a category at the Oscars for Facebook Live video – but stranger things have happened.
Go to your Facebook app and select the write something option, then select the new video head icon and get started – it is simple, very user friendly and then you can show everybody your kitchen or your new car or you might get creative and host meetings or record events for people who cannot attend. It will be interesting to see how people will make use of this app and we can reserve judgement for now. Or check out Livestream for IOS users. And some people will just use Instagram Stories. If you want a tool for creating and editing video, with loads of pre-recorded options to use, check out Video Maker at PlaceIt.
Sales Focused Video APP – Dubb
This little video app offers a FREE option and a paid one. It is ideal for talking to your contact in a video format. It is easy to use and it tracks all the opens, to give you great feedback.
Check it out here. Get the 14 day free trial and take it for a test drive. No Credit card details required. It is like Loom which is technically excellent, but ideal for tech support types. This is better for people in sales roles. And a nifty little video tool for your website is VideoAsk, which allows you record and post video, which gives the viewer the opportunity to reply via Video, Audio or text.
