Narrative: Live video is the next big thing
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Twitter Adds Top Commentary Tab to Live Video Experience – Mashable (Mar 1, 2017)
It looks like Twitter debuted a new Top Commentary tab in its live video screen last night for President Trump’s address to Congress. This should have been there from the beginning – the uncurated selection of tweets that has been shown against most live video since it launched on Twitter has been an unusable mess, and this new tab is a huge improvement. For the first time, this actually demonstrates the value of a curated stream of top tweets for a real-time event, something most active users of Twitter likely already grasp, but new users tuning in for a live video event don’t. Showing them the value – and power – of watching a well selected stream of tweets in real time is critical to converting them to active users of the platform. But of course Twitter should be doing this kind of real-time curation constantly for major topics across the site, especially given that it appears the feature is algorithm-driven, which means it’s much more scalable than something curated by human beings.
via Mashable
YouTube Introduces Live Mobile Video for Top Creators – Mashable (Feb 7, 2017)
Live video is already a big deal at YouTube, but streaming live video from a mobile device has been surprisingly late in YouTube’s rollout of the feature. Now, it’s finally making it available to channel owners with over 10,000 subscribers, after testing it for months with a smaller group of creators. This feels like a smart way to start, even if it’s somewhat ironic that the video platform known for user generated content will close the feature off to regular users, at least for the time being. If the quality of the early live video on YouTube is good, it could do much better than on Facebook, where most of the live video I’ve seen has been pretty poor, and feels more like spam in my feed than a useful addition. YouTube seems to be sensibly prioritizing quality over quantity here. The monetization angle is interesting – mid-roll ads are always interruptive, and YouTube appears to be focusing on paid comments, a much more unique model and one which doesn’t detract from the video itself. I’m very curious to see how much that feature gets used, though Google will never tell us how much money it makes this way.
via Mashable
Periscope CEO Kayvon Beykpour is now running all of Twitter’s live video products- Recode (Feb 6, 2017)
Live video is a big focus for Twitter, arguably to the exclusion of almost any other major innovation in the core product, and so it makes sense that it has a leader who reports directly to Jack Dorsey. But Twitter has always had two approaches to live video: Periscope, the original play, is a standalone app focused on user-generated content, and then there are all Twitter’s live video partnerships with existing content owners like the NFL and Bloomberg. It makes sense to start bringing these products together under a single leadership to make sure they work together effectively, but I think it’s also quite possible that we start to see Periscope integrated more into the core app and lose some of its identity as a separate product. Hopefully this will also free up Keith Coleman, who runs product at Twitter, to focus on all the other things that need fixing.
via Recode
Vine Is Dead: Twitter Pulls Plug on Short-Form Video Service – Variety (Jan 17, 2017)
This isn’t news per se – it was announced some time ago. But the shutdown is notable for coming in the midst of another big video push by Twitter, around live video. Vine was the hot thing back in 2012, but Twitter’s focus has become so much narrower in the past few months that it now doesn’t fit and must be discarded. That’s both sad and odd, because Vine had its legion of fans, it was particularly well suited to basketball highlights, and it made a few stars of its own. But neither those stars or Twitter made money directly from Vine, the experience was always very separate from the core Twitter app, and Twitter’s focus is now elsewhere. It remains to be seen, though, whether Twitter will actually be better served by offering the same live video available elsewhere rather than sticking with one of its most unique forms of content.
via Vine Is Dead: Twitter Pulls Plug on Short-Form Video Service | Variety
Facebook looks like it’s going to stop paying publishers to make live videos – Recode (Jan 17, 2017)
Facebook has made a huge push around live video, and still is on the consumer side, but it looks like it’s backing down from paying professional video content creators to produce more of it for the site. That can be read in one of two ways, and this article doesn’t make clear which it is: either Facebook has the product where it wants it and so can afford to take its foot off the gas, or the push hasn’t been working and it’s pivoting to other things. My suspicion is that it’s the latter – we’ll continue to see prompts for users to share live video, but Facebook is giving up on professional live video. I think that’s sensible if it’s the case – Twitter’s strategy of simply licensing existing linear live video feeds seems to make a lot more sense here, even if the revenue opportunities are limited. Professional live video on Facebook just doesn’t seem to be taking off.
via Facebook looks like it’s going to stop paying publishers to make live videos – Recode