Facebook has officially entered the livestreaming game. Kind of.
If you’re a celebrity, you can now livestream to your fans. If you’re reading this, you’re probably a regular person without millions of Facebook followers. That’s ok, you’re still a special snowflake and your life has meaning. But you can’t livestream on Facebook. Yet.
Facebook ‘Live’, as it’s calling it, is only available through Facebook’s Mentions app. Mentions, of course, is Facebook’s app for public figures only. The company launched it about a year ago.
“Starting today, public figures can share live video from Facebook Mentions, the app that makes it easy for athletes, musicians, politicians and other influencers to talk with their fans and each other. You can discover these live videos from public figures you follow in your News Feed, says Facebook’s Vadim Lavrusik. “You can comment on, like or share the video while watching a live broadcast. You can also see when your friends or other public figures start watching.”
It’s clear that Facebook is going after Meerkat and the Twitter-owned Periscope, both livestreaming apps. The big difference between Facebook Live and those apps is permanence, however. Once a Facebook livestream is completed, those videos simply become regular old videos on the streamer’s timeline (unless they choose to delete them, of course).
Both Meerkat and Periscope’s videos vanish after a certain amount of time.
For now, you can only watch while The Rock livestreams. Maybe soon, you can livestream on Facebook. For now you’ll have to stick to Periscope.