Live-Streaming Video Starts To Explode

What Happened
As Facebook makes a strong push for media owners to use its Live Video feature to broadcast on its platform, live-streaming is quickly moving up on the priority lists of publishers and content creators. Last Friday, BuzzFeed scored almost three million viewers on Facebook with its live-stream of a simplistic-yet-captivating experiment of putting rubber bands on a watermelon until it burst from the tightening force. The end result was a glorious watermelon explosion as well as a victory for Buzzfeed as the live stream attracted 808,000 concurrent viewers at its peak and 2.8 million viewers overall.  

In related news, Al Roker, famed TV personality and host of NBC’s Today, has launched a digital video network that produces content for live-streaming platforms, including Facebook, Twitter’s Periscope, YouTube, and YouNow. Roker is no stranger to live-streaming as he hosted a live cooking series on Meerkat last year.

What Brands Need To Do
As an emerging medium, live-streaming has been gaining momentum recently and increasingly drawing mainstream audiences. Last week, Periscope hit a milestone of 200 million live broadcasts since its launch one year ago. Facebook’s Live Video feature officially rolled out to all users in early February. Some early-adopting brands such as GE and Calvin Klein have followed the eyeballs and started live-streaming on those platforms. For brands seeking to engage with online audiences in real time, Buzzfeed’s fun experiment provides a good example in how brands can use simple, creative premises to devise compelling, suspenseful content that captures consumer attention.

Check back later this week for our coverage of Facebook’s annual F8 developer conference, where Live Video will most likely be one of the products that Facebook highlights.

 


Source: The Verge and Variety

Header image courtesy of  BuzzFeed’s Facebook Video