Facebook now allows streaming videos

It has been over a month since Facebook started testing its live video-streaming feature named “Live Video” on few Apple iPhone users in the US. The social networking giant seems to have taken this seriously and decided a global roll out of the feature.

“Today, we’re excited to expand the ability to share live video to everyone in the U.S. via iPhone, and we plan to start rolling this out to the rest of the world over the coming weeks,” announced Facebook in a press release.

This confirms that Facebook is serious in entering into the domain of live-streaming to take on Meerkat and Twitter-owned Periscope, two of the leaders in this space. Using the feature seems to be quite simple.

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To enable the feature, the user can just tap “live video.” It will show you a preview of what is being captured by the front camera. Hit “Go Live” to broadcast video. It will appear on the News Feed. After the broadcast, it will be automatically saved to the Timeline like any other video.

The broadcaster can see the “number of live viewers, the names of friends who are tuning in and a real-time stream of comments. ” The user will be able to watch live videos posted by friends and even celebrities. One can also subscribe to get notified once the broadcaster goes live.

The concept of Live-streaming video is fresh and going to soon be embraced by people across the globe. During a conference call to discuss its quarterly earnings on Wednesday, the tech giant mentioned that each day, Facebook users watch 100 million hours of video, reports MIT Technology review.

Another study published by eMarketer reveals that the share of digital video views for mobile phones have steadily grown in the past 2 two years. As of Q1 2015 study, mobile phones account for 34 percent of digital video views across the globe as compared to 7 percent for tablets.

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