Dive Brief:
- Facebook is changing its news feed algorithm to promote Live Video when that video is actually live streaming.
- Part of the change is Facebook considering Live Video a separate content type from normal videos.
- Facebook made the move after listening to feedback and tracking engagement with Live Video such as how many people watched a video, how long they watched it, and taking actions such as turning the sound on or making the video full screen.
Dive Insight:
In a Facebook blog post, Vibhi Kant, product manager and Jie Xu, software engineer, Facebook, wrote, “Now that more and more people are watching Live videos, we are considering Live Videos as a new content type – different from normal videos – and learning how to rank them for people in News Feed. As a first step, we are making a small update to News Feed so that Facebook Live videos are more likely to appear higher in News Feed when those videos are actually live, compared to after they are no longer live.”
The post pointed out that people spend three times more time watching Live Video than videos that are not live.
Marketing Land sees the move from Facebook as a direct challenge to Twitter’s Periscope, pointing out that Facebook offers a larger potential audience than Twitter for live streaming videos.
