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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

To compete with popular live video streaming services such as Periscope [soylentnews.org] and Meerkat [wikipedia.org], Facebook has debuted "Live Video" [fb.com] for a small percentage of U.S. iPhone users. Previously available only for celebrity accounts, the feature will allow Facebook users to broadcast to a select audience [techcrunch.com]:

What's different from Periscope is that only close friends will receive notifications about broadcasts, and afterwards, replay videos are automatically saved and remain permanently visible.

The expansion of Live is part of Facebook's push "to help friends and family feel like they're in the moment with you", according to Product Managers Vadim Lavrusik and Thai Tran.

Along the same lines, Facebook too unveiled a new sharing format which lets you post multiple photos and videos as tiles in what it calls Collages. Think of it like the multi-photo stories people could share on Facebook, but with videos too, and options to resize each white-bordered tile like in Instagram's standalone app Layout. You can see an example on Tran's Facebook profile here. Collages are coming to iOS starting today and Android next year.

Both Live and Collages show Facebook's willingness to adopt whatever sharing mediums are popular in order to stay relevant, no matter whether it's criticized for copying.

Original Submission