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Facebook has a simple reason for why it shows so much live video

Mark Zuckerberg Facebook live video
Mark Zuckerberg is a big fan of live video and regularly broadcasts from his personal Facebook page. Facebook

If you check Facebook regularly, you've likely seen a steady uptick of live videos showing up in your news feed over the past couple of months. These broadcasts are mostly from celebrities and media outlets doing things like hosting Q&As or exploding watermelons with rubber bands.

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You're seeing these live videos, which are typically shot on smartphones, because Facebook wants you to. The social network has been algorithmically boosting live video in the News Feed for weeks.

That means whenever a page or person you follow goes live, you're going to see it at the top of your feed. Facebook's reasoning for ranking live videos high in the News Feed is fairly simple: it's worried you won't see them otherwise.

"All of our changes tend to be rooted in what we think people want," Facebook's director of engineering for News Feed, Tom Alison, told Tech Insider during a recent interview at the company's California headquarters. "Live video is really engaging, but it's also ephemeral by nature. When there's a live video that could potentially be in your News Feed from a publisher or person that you follow, we want to make sure that you have the opportunity to see it."

Live video is a relatively new feature for Facebook, and it's something CEO Mark Zuckerberg is personally "obsessed" with. He's called the medium "raw" and "visceral" because viewers can comment and interact with the person who's live. At a time when people are sharing personal information on Facebook less and less, live video feels intimate and not overly produced.

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Mark Zuckerberg live video
Yes, you can even shoot live video from a drone. Facebook

Facebook first gave celebrities and verified profiles the ability to shoot live video before opening up the feature to everyone a few months ago.

Now, the company is opening up the potential for live videos to look more polished: Zuckerberg recently announced that media outlets can shoot live video from professional cameras and even drones. 

Facebook's live video offering differs from its main competitor, the Twitter-owned Periscope app, in a key way: live videos are saved by default once they're concluded. Periscope automatically deletes broadcasts after 24 hours. 

This is a crucial difference: it enables any Facebook user with a smartphone to start their own live video production company, where all live video is instantly converted to an archive. Your Facebook page is your channel.

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If that sounds like something you'd be into, now is the time to start: Facebook's focus currently is on making sure people see videos while they're live, according to Alison, who manages the engineering team responsible for how the News Feed shows you content.

"We want to make sure people see it in their News Feed at the right time," Alison told TI. "As this medium grows and more people use the product, we're going to be continuing to iterate on how we display it and rank it in News Feed."

His team first acknowledged the change in a company blog post on March 1 that said people spend over 3x longer watching a video while it's live on Facebook compared to a recorded video that’s no longer live. That's an important metric, because all Facebook videos autoplay as you scroll past them in the News Feed. If people are sticking around longer to watch a live video versus a recorded one, it makes sense for Facebook to promote live videos as they're happening.

Screen Shot 2016 04 18 at 3.17.50 PM
Every publisher page I like sends me a notification when they go live, and there's nothing I can do about it. Tech Insider

Another tactic Facebook is using to boost live video views is sending a notification whenever a page you've liked starts a broadcast. Facebook is going to let people turn off live video notifications, the company told BuzzFeed News, but the opt-out option is buried in account settings.

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The combination of always-on live video notifications and favoritism in the News Feed is resulting in publishers (ourselves included) attracting lots of eyeballs to live broadcastsAn upcoming redesign of Facebook's mobile app puts a tab for live video front and center where the shortcut to Messenger currently sits. 

It's unclear how views of live videos will be effected if Facebook ever decides to de-prioritize them in the News Feed. And will people still want to watch live videos when they look more produced? For now, Facebook has something that's working, and it wants you watching all the live video it can show you.

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