Whether it be at a political rally, concert, or sleepover with a group of friends goofing off, one of the most popular tools on social media at the moment is live-streaming, primarily on Facebook Live. This Snapchat story on steroids broadcasts video in real time and promotes interaction between viewers and streamers through archived comments and emotional reactions.
Periscope dominated the world of live-streaming until the advent of Facebook Live during the last year took over the industry. The tool is quite easily accessible as users can stream and watch right from the app. Comparatively, on Periscope, users were required to download an app in addition to having an account its parent company Twitter. This accessibility makes it easy for anyone to broadcast their world to the entire world.
Or at least their friends, depending on their privacy settings.
One down side of Facebook Live is how limited audiences can be. Pages can broadcast publically but for personal accounts, there are usually locks on what people who they aren’t friends with can view. For that reason, a simple video doesn’t have the same ability to go viral that it did when Periscope was king.
Likewise, the main purpose that I used Periscope for when it was still very popular was the map feature that allowed viewers to access streams of any geographic location in the world by looking on a map. Shortly after the Paris bombing and during the Michael Brown/Trayvon Martin protests, I often used the app to get untouched, firsthand footage of what was going on to better experience current events. That is not as accessible with Facebook Live; now, we must rely on the same new outlets that broadcast opinionated footage on television for our social media coverage.
The privacy however may be a plus for Facebook Live in other regards.
I never streamed anything of myself or personal on Periscope because of how vulnerable I was on the app. Simply put, I saw it as a way to share video, not tell people around the world who I am. I still have not posted a Facebook Live, but I think that I may be more likely to do so than I ever was on Periscope.
Now, other than my dislike of how I look and sound on camera, I don’t see a reason I wouldn’t live stream on Facebook Live, provided that what I was posting had relevance and value. So too will other people use Facebook Live when they may not have used Periscope to do things like give friends a live look at their vacation, strangely go on a live rant, or do the most technologically overdone, 21st-century thing, ever: stream their child’s first steps.
Our modern world is evolving in how it tells stories and Facebook, as old as it is in terms of the Internet’s age of rapid change and new features, has continued to keep up with the times. It taking over the live streaming sector of communication is demonstrative of the power that Mark Zuckerberg and Co. have as technological influencers and leaders.
I actually have never really heard of Periscope before (I was late to the whole twitter thing and only made one like three months ago and have hardly used it since), but reading the features the app offered, it seemed like a very intriguing source of raw information about the world. I imagine videos like that were very informative of specific events like the Paris bombing and other breaking news. I’ve seen Facebook live attempt to do similar things through pages like the NY Times, and I appreciate Facebook live for streaming events like Obama’s final speech so that I can easily watch them over the internet. It will be interesting to see the eventual scope of Facebook live. It might be not as much for the average person to share with the world what’s going on, but more as a resource for news companies to easily stream content. At the same time, the only facebook live video I was featured in was during a road trip, where one guy started filming and basically everyone watching the livestream was in the car… Social media has a weird way of intersecting with itself. The way we get news and see the world is only going to change as technology and social media advances.