Facebook has a Periscope-like live-streaming video tool now available — but only for celebrities.
The social media giant today introduced Live for Facebook Mentions, a new feature available for athletes, musicians, politicians and other influencers to share live video with fans on Facebook.
When activated, the live video streams will show up in the News Feed and users can comment, like, and share a link to the stream itself, which is saved for viewing at a later time. Public figures can interact with fans and see the number of viewers at any given time.
“In the coming days, keep an eye out for Live broadcasts from Dwayne The Rock Johnson, Serena Williams, Luke Bryan, Ricardo Kaka, Ashley Tisdale, Lester Holt, Martha Stewart, Michael Bublé and more,” Facebook noted today.
The functionality is very similar to apps like Twitter-owned Periscope and Meerkat, but it looks like Facebook is focusing on celebrities for now. Facebook told TechCrunch that live-streaming would be “an awesome experience” for normal users, but did not say when and if the feature would be released to the masses.
The feature is available within Facebook Mentions, an app Facebook released last month that can only be accessed by people with verified accounts.
