The rise of live video streaming

Eliz­a­beth War­ren is a US politi­cian and the woman most like­ly to run against Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump in 2020. Ear­li­er this month, she attempt­ed to dis­cred­it Trump’s pick for attor­ney gen­er­al by read­ing a let­ter from Mar­tin Luther King’s wid­ow. Barred from con­tin­u­ing to do so from the floor of the Sen­ate, she took to Face­book Live instead. To date, the video has reg­is­tered more than 12.5 mil­lion views.

Sen­a­tor Warren’s actions are the new nor­mal. New because live stream­ing via a mobile device is a rel­a­tive­ly recent phe­nom­e­non. Nor­mal because for two decades the inter­net has been democ­ra­tis­ing the tools of mass com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Live video is just the lat­est way to reach large audi­ences unmedi­at­ed.

The dominance of Facebook Live

The Eliz­a­beth War­ren video tells us some­thing else as well. Less than a year after its launch, Face­book Live has become syn­ony­mous with live stream­ing. Announc­ing the ser­vice last April, founder Mark Zucker­berg promised to put “a TV cam­era” in all our pock­ets. And yet we already had one or at least the oppor­tu­ni­ty to access mobile apps that did just that. Twitter’s Periscope and the social net­work-agnos­tic Meerkat launched in March 2015 while web­cast­ing ser­vice YouNow had a four-year jump on both. Nev­er­the­less, Face­book Live appears to dom­i­nate. So much for first-mover advan­tage.

“There’s a say­ing in Spain, ‘The sec­ond mouse gets the cheese’,” notes Drew Ben­vie, founder of social media agency Bat­ten­hall. “Face­book saw some­thing that worked and, like so often, copied it and put it on a much big­ger can­vas.” It’s not just its scale that gives Face­book an advan­tage – 1.86 bil­lion active users a month against Twitter’s 319 mil­lion – but its wider demo­graph­ic reach – more celebri­ties, more brands and more coun­tries. Two thirds of those most active­ly live stream­ing are doing so in lan­guages oth­er than Eng­lish, accord­ing to analy­sis by Social­bak­ers.

Live video is the lat­est way to reach large audi­ences unmedi­at­ed

At the BBC, Radio 1’s News­beat has large­ly swapped Periscope, used heav­i­ly dur­ing the 2015 UK gen­er­al elec­tion, for Face­book Live. The news pro­gramme pro­duces one live stream a week on aver­age, typ­i­cal­ly on loca­tion. Report­ing from the US-Mex­i­can bor­der dur­ing the recent pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, for exam­ple, view­ers were grant­ed a guid­ed tour from a bor­der patrol offi­cer. “Young News­beat Brits were able to put their ques­tions direct­ly to some­one they would nev­er get to speak to oth­er­wise,” says Newsbeat’s dig­i­tal edi­tor Anna Doble.

Ms Doble believes it’s this inter­ac­tion that gives live the edge over record­ed video. “It com­pels peo­ple to ask in-the-moment ques­tions,” she says. And while a request on Twit­ter might gen­er­ate six ques­tions, Face­book Live gen­er­ates 60 ques­tions. She adds: “That’s a real appeal to news organ­i­sa­tions.”

News­beat is learn­ing what works and what doesn’t. Visu­al­ly com­pelling con­tent works. Reg­u­lar updates work too because few view­ers watch the entire­ty of a stream. “Treat it like a rolling news chan­nel,” says Ms Doble. When they get it right, a Face­book Live stream on the main News­beat page can attract 100,000 view­ers.

User-generated content

Indi­vid­ual suc­cess sto­ries are one thing. Under­stand­ing in aggre­gate how many peo­ple are cre­at­ing and view­ing Face­book Live is quite anoth­er. Why? Because while Face­book is hap­py to share its head­line user-base, it is reluc­tant to do the same for Face­book Live. It will say that the num­ber of peo­ple broad­cast­ing live at any giv­en minute grew four-fold between May and Octo­ber 2016. It is also under­stood that peo­ple watch live streams three times longer and com­ment ten times more often than with record­ed video.

As for the most viewed Face­book Live, it’s an unde­ni­ably triv­ial but riotous­ly joy­ous piece-to-cam­era fea­tur­ing a 37-year-old woman show­ing off her new­ly-pur­chased Star Wars mask. Chew­bac­ca Mom has clocked up 164 mil­lion views.

Still, a lack of absolute num­bers and an ini­tial deci­sion to pay some media com­pa­nies and celebri­ties to cre­ate con­tent, plays to a nar­ra­tive that take-up may not be as high as hoped. Else­where, there are reports that video engage­ment is low­er than imag­ined. A report by ana­lyt­ics firm Parse.ly found that users spend more time engaged read­ing text posts than watch­ing video. The Reuters Insti­tute for the Study of Jour­nal­ism at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty found sim­i­lar­ly.

Despite this, Battenhall’s Mr Ben­vie insists that live video, regard­less of provider, is here to stay. Asked how he advis­es clients to use it, he says: “It’s not how but who. The best exam­ples are from indi­vid­u­als or brands where live video is part of how they com­mu­ni­cate.” The likes of Red Bull, Gen­er­al Motors and Land Rover – the lat­ter live stream­ing test dri­ves – have all exper­i­ment­ed. By going live, these brands aim to do what Eliz­a­beth War­ren did – cut out the media mid­dle­man. Live video is now part of the con­tent marketer’s tool­box.

So where next?

Will live video prove a gate­way to oth­er immer­sive sto­ry­telling tech­niques? Ms Doble at News­beat thinks so. She imag­ines, as an exam­ple, a large protest enhanced by aug­ment­ed real­i­ty and 360-degree visu­als to give the view­er, in per­son or watch­ing remote­ly, an oppor­tu­ni­ty to inter­act with oth­er pro­tes­tors.

Mr Ben­vie believes the next stage to a more immer­sive live video expe­ri­ence will see it inte­grat­ed with the “sto­ry” feed, a con­cept first pop­u­larised by Snapchat that allows users to chart the day’s events in a series of ephemer­al mul­ti­me­dia posts. Bor­row­ing from its par­ent company’s play­book, Face­book-owned Insta­gram repli­cat­ed the idea and called it “Sto­ries”. Last month it added live video. “Over the next year, we’ll see live video and Sto­ries grow­ing hand in hand,” pre­dicts Mr Ben­vie.