Axios: The Future is Live

Posted July 06, 2017

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Live streaming has grown wildly popular in the last five years or so. Maybe you remember the first consumer live streaming app that took the world by storm: Meerkat. Since then, big players like Facebook and YouTube have gotten into live streaming and have helped turn it into a world-wide sensation. Now, no one even remembers their Meerkat or Periscope login.

In a new study published by Axios Facebook and YouTube are the big winners right now in the live streaming landscape. Among monthly viewers, people watch either Facebook or YouTube about half the time when they go to watch live streamed content. Facebook gets 45%, YouTube 44%, Instagram 28%, Twitter 19%, Snapchat 17%, Twitch 12%, and Livestream, Periscope, YouNow and UStream all come in with less than 10%. While there are clearly plenty of companies vying for live stream viewership, YouTube and Facebook have a clear duopoly.

Additionally, according to the report, Facebook claims that nearly 1 in 5 videos on Facebook now are live and the service's usage has grown over 4x since its initial release last year. That's after just one year; it's not too far fetched to imagine that this ratio is only going to go up as more people do live video, and technology becomes easier than it already it.

So what does this mean for you?

It means that live streaming is big business. It brings in a lot of viewers and is a lot of what people are looking for increasingly on the web -- particularly on YouTube and Facebook. This means that you should be doing live streaming as well. While your main business and work may not be live streamed, it is certainly a great place to connect with your audience and showcase your work in a teaser format.

Let's say you are out in the field shooting with an amazing character. Set up a quick live stream and make people aware of your project and introduce them to your character -- building excitement for what may ultimately be. Maybe you are editing the piece and just finished a nice sequence you can't wait to show people -- throw it up on live. Additionally, these platforms, particularly Facebook, are great to get as many eyes on your work as possible. You can share a live stream with a group or network that you think may enjoy, and then who knows maybe it catches on and gets shared around the web.

From Axios:

Live boom: Facebook launched its live platform last year and now says 1 in 5 videos on its platform are live and daily time spent watching Facebook Live broadcasts has grown by more than 4x. 

Why it matters: The video duopoly of Facebook and YouTube is killing it in the arms race for live-streaming dominance, which should have traditional TV companies worried. Nearly half of online users watch live-streaming every week and nearly a quarter say they watch live-streaming every day, per Magid's latest social broadcasting study.

Facebook also announced earlier this year it's finally matching YouTube in giving publishers a 55 percent cut of ad dollars to seed its real-time offerings.

Both platforms have launched a ton of live-streaming partnerships around sports in particular. Why? Look at the type of programming watched live versus on DVR, via comScore:

• Sports: 90% - 10%
• News: 90% - 10%
• Comedy: 85% - 15%
• Movies: 85% - 15%
• Reality: 75% - 25%
• Drama: 71% - 29%

See the full post here.