If there’s one thing that celebrities and hip-hop artists (and those who aspire to be celebrities and hip-hop artists) love, it’s social media. If there’s a close second, it’s YouTube. From Young Thug’s 12 hours long YouTube live stream, “Meet Me at the London,” to YouTube serving as the modern replacement for MTV, there’s no shortage of ways that artists have capitalized on the capabilities of both platforms.
On Monday, Facebook announced that it was taking a major leap into the video space. During a session at the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) in Amsterdam, the social media giant (which also owns Instagram), unveiled several bold updates aimed at video creators and publishers. The main points included featured that will better enable video creators to simulcast live broadcasts on more than one streaming service at once and to take better advantage of Watch Party events as well as new metrics that can be used to track video performance. They also announced that they will be placing a heavier emphasis on IGTV, Instagram’s video-sharing feature.
Techcrunch reported that through the Live API, publishers can now use a “rehearsal” feature to broadcast live only to Page admins and editors in order to test new production setups, interactive features, and show formats before going live to a full audience. Additionally, publishers will also be able to trim the beginning and end of a live video and can live broadcast for as long as eight hours — double the previous limit of four hours.
Interestingly enough, the feature has already been tested on Facebook by two very different groups: QVC and NASA. The shopping network, which broadcasts continuously via television and social media, reportedly gave positive feedback as did NASA, who recently broadcast an eight-hour spacewalk on Facebook’s streaming video.
Whether or not celebrities take to Facebook’s video streaming services as they have to YouTube’s remains to be seen leading us to wonder: Will Facebook kill the YouTube star?