Live Video

L

ive Video is a form of media streaming via television or the internet where video feed is broadcast to all watchers in real-time as it is being filmed, or the simultaneous act of the user uploading content as the viewer downloads and watches it. This differs from on-demand streaming which is streamed from a recorded source at any time. Live Video uses fall into two categories, the first being mainstream media from websites, newspapers, television networks, or magazines which produce broadcasts of sporting events, award shows, cooking videos, news, and others. The second category is media produced by an ordinary user such as someone sharing a video of their travels, their workout routine, or their hidden unicycling skill.

History

The first live video was a television broadcast by BBC’s John Logie Baird on March 25, 1925 at a time when the first televisions as we know them today were still being invented. As technology improved, live broadcasts on television became commonplace until videotaping was invented in the1950s. Now it is still common for programs such as news broadcasts, sporting events, and award shows to be broadcast live on television.

It was not until the late 1990s and early 2000s that network bandwidth was strong enough to stream audio and video feed to most computers. In 1993, the band Severe Tire Damage became the first group to broadcast live over the internet from a concert in Xerox PARC. This was accomplished by the company MBone using IP multicasting. In the following few years, baseball games, symphonies, and various rock bands were all featured broadcast live over the internet.

Over the next decade network system and hardware improvements were made so that in 2005 when YouTube was founded the technology existed in most home computers to take advantage of this new technology. This was one of the pivotal moments where Live Video expanded into the social media sphere.

2016 has fostered the most growth in Live Video yet. Many of the most popular social media platforms have implemented their own form of Live Video and are investing a lot of money to help it gain popularity. Twitter paid $10 million for the right to live stream NFL games on Thursday nights through their Periscope app and Facebook spent over $50 million in contracts to produce live videos. With social media giants such as Twitter and Facebook encouraging users to make and watch live videos they are changing social media from being asynchronous where one can view information at their own pace, to prompting users with notifications to log-in and view content the moment it is created.

Examples

Facebook Live

Facebook is a popular social media site for posting and sharing data and communicating with others. In April of 2016 Facebook Live was released for all users. In its original release in 2015, its use was only available to celebrities and public figures. Facebook’s “reactions” have been incorporated and, keeping with the theme of real-time, a viewers’ reactions appear to float through the video as they are made. Facebook even has a tab along the bottom of the mobile application dedicated solely to Facebook Live videos. In 2016 Facebook invested over $50 million into creating contracts with media companies and celebrities such as Tastemade, Huffington Post, Kevin Hart, and Cordon Ramsay to creating Live Videos. The Wall Street Journal reported that Justin Osofsky, vice president of global operations and media partnership for Facebook stated that this was done “so we could be feedback from a variety of different organizations about what works and what doesn’t.” Facebook pushing the use of live video also has increased user engagement reporting that Facebook is seeing that users commenting 10 times more on live videos than regular videos.

Youtube Live Video

YouTube, a Google subsidiary, was one of the pioneering sites for live video integrating a live video feature to the desktop site in 2011. As the popularity of live video grew with other social media applications in 2016 the number of people watching live videos via YouTube increased by 80 percent. Despite this, YouTube did not integrate live video into their mobile application until February of 2017 but unlike their competitors Facebook and Periscope, YouTube offers users who make live videos a cut of the ad revenues generated.

Periscope

Periscope, originally called Bounty, was founded in early 2014 then acquired by Twitter in 2015 less than a year later and launched the following month. By the end of the year, Periscope was named the iPhone App of the Year by Apple. Unlike Facebook Live, Periscope is still a stand-alone app and not fully incorporated into the Twitter app. Periscope also offers the ability to sketch while streaming and broadcast via GoPro.