Today, Facebook launched their newest product, Facebook Places, on their Facebook Live channel.
Places helps users share where they are, where their friends are, and to discover new places around them. With features like notifications when friends are near and integration with partners such as Gowalla, Foursquare, Yelp and Booyah, the product provides a whole new layer to the experience of sharing places.
The Facebook Live channel, with Livestream as its official live streaming partner, serves as the central online space to hear Facebook announcements, watch press events, take part in live chats with Facebook engineers & special guests and to watch the annual f8 developer conference. It also incorporates Facebook’s real-time Live Feed technology to facilitate interactions between the viewing audience and the speaker.
Livestream CEO Max Haot had this to say regarding the launch of Facebook Live:
“We are proud to be the official live streaming partner for Facebook Live and to help Facebook extend its events at Facebook HQ to the broader online community.”
To learn more about Places, click through to watch the replay of Facebook’s announcement now.
[reblogged from the original on Mashable.com on August 13]
by Adam Ostrow
Facebook, which is already widely used as a platform for distributing live video, is making a play of its own with a new app called Facebook Live.
However, unlike services like Ustream and Livestream that offer live video features for Facebook Pages, Facebook Live is more of a channel dedicated to the happenings of the social networking company as opposed to a platform for others.
In a statement, the company says it will be using Facebook Live “to be your window into what’s new at Facebook” including celebrity guests that stop by the company’s HQ, demos of new features from employees and special events taking place (conceivably, things like the f8 conference).
The app itself looks a lot like other live video platforms, with integrated chat that broadcasts out to the News Feed. It’s also embeddable, and the company will be testing it out when actress America Ferrera stops by at 6 p.m. ET this evening.
It will be interesting to see how Facebook goes about promoting the feature. Might we see notifications in the News Feed when a big guest stops by the company’s HQ? That would give the site an opportunity to aggregate some huge audiences around live video, though it remains to be seen if that’s in the cards or if this is more of a PR move to make the company feel more personable.
Either way, it’s a nice boon for Livestream, which has been chosen as the official live video partner for the project.
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We’ve been busy… busy adding new features to the Livestream Website & Service on a weekly basis. So busy in fact, that we haven’t been updating the Community on what we’re working on as much as we’d like. From this week forward, we plan on posting Product Updates to inform you of what’s new, what’s different, and what you can expect to see in the future.
Following our exclusive coverage of Facebook’s F8 Conference in San Francisco, we updated our Homepage and Channel Pages with several Facebook Social Plugins that easily allow you to share Livestream content through your Facebook Account and see which videos your Facebook friends are sharing.
“Like” button on Livestream Channel Pages
The “Like” button enables you to make connections to a channel page and share that content with your friends on Facebook in one simple click. If you’re already logged into Facebook, click the “Like” button to share it on your Wall. If you haven’t logged into Facebook yet, clicking the “Like” button will open a window where you may login via your Facebook Account.
“On Livestream” Widget
The “On Livestream” Widget can be found on all Livestream Channel Pages. This widget highlights six of the latest “likes” that your Facebook Friends have shared on Livestream.com. We believe it’s a great way to stay up to date with what your friends have been watching across the network.
Click a link to visit the channel your friend has shared.
“Recommended” Widget
The “Recommended” Widget can be located on all Livestream Channel Pages as well as the Livestream Homepage. This useful widget showcases the most popular Channels or Videos on Livestream that have been shared through Facebook by both friends and other users.
Livestream Premium Channel Owners can disable these features within the Livestream Account Center’s Configuration page if desired.
We hope you enjoy these new social plugin features. Stay tuned to our blog for information about upcoming features, events, and more.
Yesterday we debuted a new live streaming application, built specifically for the Facebook F8 conference (held yesterday in San Fancisco). The event was an incredible success and we’re proud to announce the Facebook partnership. Now that the dust has settled we’d like to take you through a few of the product features in more detail.
1. Support for iPad & iPhone via HTML5
The entire F8 application can be viewed on iPad as well as on your desktop computer using HTML5 versions of the Livestream Player. While live, the streams were also available to iPhone, Android and Blackberry users via our mobile website.
2. Six Simultaneous Live Streams
As well as the primary keynote stream, users are able to watch any of four ‘Breakout Sessions’ as well as a live roaming camera hosted by Randy Zucherberg. Realtime thumbnails for each stream are available throughout the application for content discovery.
3. Roaming Camera powered by Livestream Livepack
Mobile live streaming is made possible using the Livestream Livepack, an elegant backpack solution for reliable high bandwidth mobile broadcast. Find out more about Livepack here.
4. Live-blogging from mobile devices
The F8 team are able to update live-blogs on each of the streams directly from their iPhones to keep viewers in the know. In addition, we made it possible for viewers to watch one stream while reading the live-blog of another.
5. Ask a Question
During the event viewers were able to ask questions from within the Livestream application directly to people being interviewed on the roaming camera. Randi Zucherberg could read and filter these questions directly on her iPad.
6. Multi-lingual Chat
Chat-rooms on each stream were available in seven different languages. Perfect for the global audience of the Facebook developer platform.
F8, the Facebook developer conference, was held earlier today for the third time in San Francisco. Amidst much anticipation, CEO Mark Zucherberg took the stage to introduce the next version of the Facebook platform, including a host of new features that have the potential to transform the social/semantic web.
As ever the conference was open to a limited number of developers. This year however, for the first time ever the entire event was streamed live to thousands of viewers on the web using the Livestream Platform.
We’re excited to partner with Facebook and the F8 conference has been a great opportunity for us to showcase some upcoming technologies of our own here at Livestream. The Facebook application, designed specifically for this event, boasts six simultaneous channels, a host of social features (chat, live-blogs, social feeds, recordings) and even support for the iPad and other HTML5 enabled devices.
If you missed the event, you can still check out the Livestream Facebook application and watch a replay of Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote address here.
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Right after their Season 2 premiere, the cast of TNT police & detective drama Southland spoke to their fans live on Facebook, using the Livestream Facebook application. The cast discussed with fans their reactions to the premiere episode and answered fan questions.
Cast members Michael Cudlitz, Shawn Hatosy, Regina King, Benjamin McKenzie, Tom Everett Scott and the rest of the cast answered questions like “What makes the cast’s chemistry on the show so great?” (see below for Ben McKenzie’s answer)
This event was another great example of a TV network maximizing the effect of a premiere episode event by incorporating a live chat. Jesse Ventura also recently spoke to fans via Livestream after the premiere of his new show Conspiracy Theory on TruTV.
Since this chat was embedded at TNT.com, the online viewers were able to watch preview clips for other TNT dramas leading up to the broadcast, allowing the network to promote other shows debuting mid-season.
Ben McKenzie:
Michael Cudlitz:
The Cast:
Ben McKenzie answers a fan question:
Tiger Wood’s live press conference at the PGA Tour Headquarters this morning was a truly viral event. The world’s best golfer has been in the midst of gossip and scandal since November 27th 2009, and for the first time since, publicly addressed those issues.
Traditional and online publishers publicized the event heavily–on Livestream alone over 10 news organizations made the pool feed available to their communities (see our homepage’s screenshot below!). Among them, Associated Press Live (aplive), USA Today (usa_today1) and Canadian broadcaster Global TV (globalnewsnow) streamed on Livestream.com, embedded on their websites and Facebook, and utilized Livestream’s integrated Facebook and Twitter chats.
Watch the recording of the event on AP Live’s channel:
And here are a few screenshots from the event:
On AP Live:
On Livestream ‘s homepage:
On Facebook:
On Global TV:
It was announced Monday that Facebook fans had selected Invisible Children to receive a $1 million grant from Chase as part of the Chase Community Giving program. In their weekly broadcasts on Livestream, the US high school and college students at IC host fundraising drives for children who have been kidnapped and forced to serve as soldiers in a civil war in Uganda.
Invisible Children’s Cameron Woodward had this to say:
“Livestream played an important role in mobilizing and inspiring Invisible Children supporters. Having a direct feed into the IC offices inspired hundreds of viewers around the world to secure extra votes from friends and family…The broadcast also gave Invisible Children supporters a chance to celebrate with us when we won the grant.”
Invisible Children received over 120,000 votes on Facebook in the second round, putting them at the top, surpassing other great organizations like To Write Love On Her Arms and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. The organization will use this $1 million award to build schools in central Africa as well as raise awareness in North America. The grant is the largest donation ever received by the organization, which was founded by three young people who saw the effects of the war first-hand.
We’re thrilled at Livestream to be partnering with such an organization and we hope that we can assist them in earning more grants in the future! For more Information about Invisible Children, visit their Livestream
channel at http://www.livestream.com/invisiblechildren.
