Facebook will soon launch its livestreaming feature to all the users.
The social networking giant has started testing the feature to handful of average users on iOS in the United States. It is an extension of the Live feature that Facebook began offering to celebrities and public figures in August and lets people choose who can watch and tells them who is tuning in. The company said they hope to bring the feature to Android, Google's mobile operating system, early next year.
Product Managers Vadim Lavrusik and Thai Tran said that this move aims to help friends and family feel like they are in the moment with the user. Facebook Live has the ability to live-stream only to friends and family, rather than all public users, according to Tech Crunch.
Facebook Live videos are said to appear quickly in news feed and include push notifications that send alerts of the broadcast to those who have recently interacted with the page. Users are not only limited to livestream themselves but they can subscribe and follow live videos from their connections in addition to those publicly shared by celebrities and public figures.
The popular online social networking service also unveils Collages, The Verge reported. It is a feature that groups photos and videos that were taken together into a small album. It takes a cue from Google's Story feature that is baked into the new Google Photos app, except that it only brings the photos or videos into a scrolling collage, without much context.
To create a Collage, users upload a photo and Facebook will give them the option to pick multiple pictures and videos. It will then automatically turn them into a Collage. They can add, remove, rearrange, resize and re-order the tiles to highlight what they want. While viewing, videos auto-play, and they can scroll down normally or click an arrow button to jump down to a new screen full of content.
iOS users have already received the Collage feature and Android support is coming next year. Facebook collages can be viewed on any device.