Live Wars: Erkstam’s Revenge

Ever since Facebook profile videos started to roll out a couple of weeks ago, it’s been a sore point for Salgado’s office manager Daniel Erkstam that he didn’t have access to the new feature.

He felt this injustice all the more keenly as it gradually became available to others in the team, including production manager Joakim:

 

Posted by Joakim Anders Malmberg on Monday, 4 January 2016

But today the tables were turned as Daniel found himself with a new service at his fingertips, previously only available to celebrities and verified pages: Facebook Live.

This feature, which we touched on in a previous livestreaming recap, enables users to stream live video directly into their Facebook friends’ feeds. This rollout to ordinary users has come – perhaps not coincidentally – right on the tail of Twitter embedding Periscope streams into the timeline.

So today’s episode of #SalgadoTV (Daniel and Joakim’s weekly Periscope livestream) was also sent out live on Facebook. The topic of the day? Livestreaming. Meta. Catch up on Facebook or Periscope (available for the next 24 hours). The Periscope episode can also be seen as a recorded video here (without the real time comments in the Periscope stream:

The rollout of Facebook Live is really the first time that livestreaming has become a part of an average user’s social media consumption. However good Periscope, Meerkat and all the rest might be, Facebook is still where most ordinary people live their online lives. So this development could be a game changer for brands, enabling them to reach a wide audience with engaging livestreamed content.

With so many changes coming to Facebook so quickly, it’s a good time to update your app and check whether they’ve reached you yet! Back here in the office, Daniel is satisfied with his new features… for now…