Those live videos in your Facebook News Feed aren't going away any time soon.
The social network believes so strongly in the future of live video that an entire tab of its mobile app is now dedicated to watching it. The center tab in Facebook's app, which previously sent you to Messenger, is now all about live video.
It looks like this:
Beyond the new video hub, Facebook is letting anyone broadcast live video to specific groups or events — not just all of their friends and followers. The idea is that you can broadcast a live Q&A from a specific event and only have people who would be interested watch.
Facebook is taking a page out of the playbook of Periscope, Twitter's live broadcasting app, by letting viewers quickly invite their friends to watch with a dedicated invite button. If who you're inviting doesn't already like the page that's broadcasting, they'll get a notification to tune in.
You'll also finally be able to stop receiving notifications for live video from certain people and pages. That should be a welcome change for many people.
Some additional features are also being added to Facebook's live video tools for broadcasters, namely five video filters including black and white video. The ability to doodle over live videos with your finger (a la Snapchat) will also be added as well in the near future.
Viewers of Facebook's live videos now have the ability to use Reactions, Facebook's emoji responses that were recently introduced to supercharge the Like button. You can also read a video's comments in the order they were made after a broadcast ends.
Facebook's decision to give live video a home in the center tab of its main app is notable, especially given that it was considering using that same tab to showcase video from Facebook pages and media partners in October.
The video tab Facebook is deciding to give everyone is instead solely dedicated to live video, not the professionally produced stuff from pages like Tech Insider. (We do live video broadcasts too!)
A big "GO LIVE" button at the top of the new video tab in Facebook's app lets you start broadcasting from your phone, and below the button you'll find a river of live video from friends and pages you like. Facebook's desktop website will have a new map interface as "a visual way to explore public live broadcasts that are currently happening around the world," according to the company's blog.
Facebook gave verified celebrities access to live video last summer, and over the past several months it's opened up the feature to all users via Facebook's mobile app. Live video is something CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly taken a personal interest in, so it's no surprise the feature continues to gain prominence. Facebook has even offered some celebrities six-figure payouts to use live video, according to reports.
You probably won't see these changes in Facebook's app right away. Facebook says the changes will gradually become available on the iPhone and Android over the coming weeks.
