On Wednesday, Facebook (FB) rolled out new features to its Facebook Live video platform. The changes fit the name—they’re all about giving you video instantly, right now, in the moment as it’s happening—or as close to it as possible. And the changes are likely striking fear into rival social networks. If they aren’t scared, they should be.
Here’s what Facebook fanatics can do with Facebook’s new bells and whistles: Share live video directly with specific groups; post reactions that appear in an animation within the video as it plays (watch out, Periscope); doodle and add filters on a video as they shoot it (watch out, Snapchat); view a map that shows you everyone on the planet currently broadcasting live video.
But forget all of that: The most significant addition is arguably 24Live, a web hub that will feature the best Facebook Live videos from the past 24 hours. This directly takes on Moments, the section Twitter (TWTR) launched six months ago to entice new users by giving them digests, told through tweets, of big news stories. Facebook has been itching to compete with Twitter in the area of real-time content, and now it can.
Facebook Live also targets Periscope, the live-streaming video app developed by Twitter and launched last year, as well as Meerkat, the competitor that became a mega hit at South By Southwest the year before, but lost steam after Periscope came along. Both Periscope and Meerkat allowed for instant streaming of live video, and live comments and hearts that show up in the video as it streams. Now Facebook will offer those same things.
Snapchat, too, has had success with live video: Within its public Stories section, user-submitted footage from sports events like NFL games, or from political campaign rallies, have seen big engagement. If Facebook can pull off the same effect with its live videos, it will spell bad news for Snapchat and its $16 billion valuation.
In case all of that doesn’t make it clear how live-crazy Facebook is, the company has placed a Facebook Live tab in the dead center of its mobile app, replacing the button that previously opened up Messenger. It’s the company’s way of making it so that users cannot ignore live videos even if they want to. It is also a fix of sorts: When Facebook first launched Facebook Live, it enabled notifications so that any time a page you “like” on Facebook goes live, you get told. It annoyed many users, and now Facebook says the notifications are going away. Placing the Live tab in the middle of its app is its less intrusive way of flagging the content for you.