We’ve done quite a lot of write-up about Facebook’s aggressive move to take on YouTube by bringing more people to create/ upload video content to their platform. A simple search of ‘Facebook Video, on Techtippr, will show you some good reading material (or simply click the hyperlink), in case you are interested.
Here is another step towards their goal, which is, enabling Live Stream feature for Facebook users via Desktop.
Yes, now you can shoot up Facebook in your favourite browser on your Laptop/ Desktop, and you can stream live to your friends if you’ve got a webcam connected.
How to Go Live from Facebook Desktop
The Live Video options is grouped with other options like Posting Photo/Video, Check in, Activity/Feeling, Tag/ Friends.
Once you select the Live Video option, click on next.
A new Window will pop up, which will be the Webcam window. The video appears on left while the conversations appear on the right.
Earlier, this feature was only available for Mobile Devices. And it made sense to make the feature available to the only Mobile audience because Facebook Live means you can broadcast anything from anywhere, and mobile is something everybody keeps handy.
While it is good to have the option of going live on Facebook from a Laptop/ Desktop. Computers still haven’t evolved to have better quality webcams, unless, of course, you buy Webcams like Logitech 920c, which is a $60 Camera.
But it seems it’s not just about giving the users option to go Live from Desktop. Facebook is actually targeting users of a rival service that offers the same features, and that is Twitch.
It’s the place where people stream their Video Gaming Sessions. However, I find it very unlikely that this move will persuade the gamers to leave Twitch and start using Facebook.
While it is too early to speculate what will happen in the future, but it seems Facebook wants to become everything from Snapchat (ahem Stories), to Google (ahem Audience Network, to YouTube (ahem Stress Video) to Twitch (ahem Game Streamers)
In the next article, I am going to talk about what is being Live Streamed on Facebook Instead. and why Facebook is far from becoming YouTube.
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