Written: January 24, 2017
It’s ironic that, at a time when live, linear television appears to be in decline, big tech companies are trying to convince themselves and their investors that live video is the next big thing, with Twitter and Facebook being the two prime examples.
Interestingly, these two companies have focused on different aspects of live video. Twitter has Periscope for user-generated live video, but in the core Twitter experience has largely focused on procuring rights to professionally produced content that already exists and is available elsewhere. Facebook, on the other hand, has mostly focused on the user-generated angle, but has paid celebrities and some brands to experiment with the format as a way of raising awareness. Both companies have pushed their live video features hard, with Facebook spending lots of money on real-world advertising to promote its feature to regular users.
The upshot so far is that Facebook’s efforts seem to have cost the company a lot with relatively little to show for it. There is evidence that it is ramping down spending on professional live video, which could be a sign that it feels it’s primed the pump adequately or that it’s failing to gain traction – I suspect it’s the latter. On the Twitter side, Periscope continues to chug along in its fairly marginal role, with a little more integration into the core Twitter product, while its professional content delivers some decent viewership.
My sense is that user-generated live video will only survive in a few niches, because ultimately ordinary people sharing their humdrum lives with each other isn’t all that compelling. That leaves celebrities, whose humdrum lives are nonetheless interesting enough for at least some people to watch, but who also get access to some far more interesting scenarios; exclusive live video from breaking news events where professional cameras aren’t present (sadly, this will often be things like terrorist attacks); professional and semi-professional content from those who make a living at this kind of thing – life and fitness coaches, YouTube celebrities, and the like.
That leaves us with the question of the role of professionally produced live content of the kind Twitter is licensing. The big downside for Twitter is that most of that content has few if any ad slots for Twitter to sell, meaning that it might capture additional eyeballs but not many additional revenue dollars. And at a time when live viewership of everything but sports (and recently even including sports) is declining, how long will a rising share of a shrinking market be a worthwhile opportunity to pursue?