We can regard 2015 as the year livestreaming on social networks really took off. Periscope and Meerkat were launched early in 2015 and the former was bought by Twitter in March. Periscope started gaining traction after the acquisition and announced way back in August that they have over 10 million monthly active users of which 2 million are active daily. It was even recognized by Apple as the App of the Year for 2015.
However during the same time, Facebook was testing their launch of Facebook Live Video, their official livestreaming service. It started in August where celebrities on iOS and had Facebook Mentions installed could be able to broadcasts to their fans in real time. This has progressed to Live Video being rolled out to iOS users, verified Pages and Android users in the United States.
Celebrities have used it to share moments with their fans and they can be able to see the stream of comments on their broadcasts and the number of people watching the broadcast. Guy Kawasaki, the well known investor in Silicon Valley decide to share statistics of a Live Video broadcast he did and compared it with his Periscope experience.
https://www.facebook.com/guy/photos/a.134304433288534.37873.132853273433650/1088859807832987/?type=3&theater
He noticed that he got a whopping 28 times more views when he made a live broadcast on Facebook than Periscope yet he has 5 times the number of followers on Twitter. He got over 9,500 views on his video on Facebook and the Periscope broadcast only had 205 viewers after making back to back live videos on the two platforms.
There could be reasons for this:
- Facebook Live is not a separate app and you can follow live broadcasts from your friends, celebrities and other Pages right from your News Feed. On Periscope, you can view broadcasts on Twitter but it is currently on desktop.
- Facebook has a larger audience than both Twitter and Facebook and naturally it will attract a higher viewership.
As you can see, Facebook Live will be the platform of choice for many people out there who would want to share moments as they happen. Should Periscope be worried? Definitely! And as Guy Kawasaki says “…it’s clear to me which is the more powerful video platform for me.“
