UPDATED 22:42 EST / AUGUST 05 2015

NEWS

Facebook launches livestreaming for its celebrity-only Mentions app

Facebook is apparently joining the livestreaming race, but it will not be a feature for the social media giant’s roughly 1.4 billion strong user base. Instead, the livestreaming platform will focus entirely on celebrity streamers, at least for the time being.

The new livestreaming tool, which Facebook is calling “Live,” is part of the social network’s celebrity-only app Facebook Mentions, which “makes it easy for athletes, musicians, politicians and other influencers to talk with their fans and each other.”

“Live is an immersive and authentic way to connect with the public figures you care about, in real-time,” Facebook product manager Vadim Lavrusik wrote in an announcement. “If you don’t catch the live broadcast, you can also watch the video later on the public figure’s Page.”

So far the app has already been used by celebrities like former Good Eats host Alton Brown, as well as Arrow actor Stephen Amell. Facebook promises many celebrities will be using Live in the near future, including Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Serena Williams, Luke Bryan, Ricardo Kaká, Ashley Tisdale, Lester Holt, Martha Stewart, Michael Bublé, and more.

For “public figures,” Facebook promises that Live will provide better engagement with fans.

“Whether you have an established fan base or want to build up your audience, Live is a new way for you to connect authentically with your fans in the moment,” Lavrusik wrote in the announcement for Facebook Mentions users.

Live is Facebook’s latest play in taking over the web video space, which Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg considers to be the platform’s future. During a community Q&A last Fall, Zuckerberg said that within the next five years, Facebook would be “mostly video.” The social network also supposedly approached well-known YouTube stars earlier this year to entice them to produce exclusive premium video content for Facebook.

There is no indication on when or if livestreaming features will make their way out to the average Facebook user, but with the growing popularity of streaming tools like Twitch and Ustream, as well as apps like Periscope and Meerkat, live video seems like an obvious direction for the social network. It also seems likely that livestreaming could become yet another of the many features tacked onto Facebook Messenger.

Image courtesy of Facebook

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