By: Vadim Lavrusik, Product Manager and Dave Capra, Engineering Manager
Facebook Live enables you to share your experiences and perspectives in real time, with the people who matter to you – whether you’re someone who wants to broadcast to friends and family, or a public figure who wants to connect with fans around the world. Live videos on Facebook are authentic and exciting, and we’re seeing people tuning in and engaging directly with broadcasters in the moment. In fact, we’ve seen that on average people watch a live video more than three times longer when it is live compared to when it is not live.
We know that people on Android love interacting with live videos —more than 50% of people watching live videos are using Android devices. We’re excited to announce that in the next week we are going to start rolling out the ability for people on Android to share live video. We’re starting our Android rollout in the U.S., with more countries coming soon.
Last month, we announced that we planned to start bringing the ability to broadcast live to countries around the world, and now people in more than 30 countries can share live video via iOS. We’ll continue to roll this out to more people as well as Pages in countries around the world in the coming weeks.
To share live video, simply tap “What’s on your mind?” at the top of News Feed and select the Live Video icon. You can write a quick description and select the audience before going live. During your broadcast, you’ll see the number of live viewers, the names of friends who are tuning in, and respond to a real-time stream of comments. When you end your broadcast, it will be saved on your Timeline like any other video, which you can then delete or keep for your friends to watch later.
You can discover live videos from your friends and public figures you follow right in News Feed. While watching a live video, you can tap the Subscribe button to get notified the next time the broadcaster goes live.
Facebook Live is also available to public figures and Pages. Learn more in our Help Center.