Facebook flips on switch for live video on its iPhone app

The option to show live video is being turned on Thursday for everyone in the US with Facebook’s app installed on an iPhone. A limited number of users including some celebrities were able to experience the new feature as Facebook began initial trials for the application last December. When you end your broadcast, the video gets saved to your Timeline like any other video. But the big blue network says that it will be rolling it out to the rest of its 1.6 billion users in the next few weeks.

The feature appears to be Facebook’s response to Twitter’s Periscope application, which also allow live video streaming.

“When you only have a Like button, if you share a sad piece of content or something that makes you angry, people may not have the tool to react to it”. On the face of it the announcement puts them on a direct course to clash with Twitter’s mission to connect people live in the moment.

It’s as simple as sharing a status; there is now a Live Video icon in the status update bar, and you can add a description and choose the audience you want to share it with.

You can discover live videos from your friends and public figures you follow right in News Feed. Android users will have to wait just a while longer, as Facebook hasn’t offered an exact time frame but said that live video should arrive “soon”. For now, this feature will only be available to iPhone users. A comment section will also be available, so that the user streaming the online video can exchange thoughts and opinions with the audience in real-time.

The feature was originally rolled out to famous users back in August in the Facebook Mentions app.

But when I want to stream something more intimate, like a game of Cards Against Humanity with some friends or scenes from a girls’ night in, I can see myself picking Facebook. The company, which increasingly promotes video to users, announced Wednesday that 500 million people are now watching more than 100 hours of video on the social network each day.