Facebook Live Gets Touted 2-Person Broadcasting Feature

At the annual VidCon conference in June, the social giant had announced that it will roll out a bunch of new capabilities to Facebook Live. This included scheduling, two-person broadcasting, and MSQRD integration. Now, Facebook is ready with one of these features and is set to roll it out commercially.

The two-person broadcast feature will go live first for all users (and brands) with a verified page, and have the Facebook Mentions iOS app. It is essential to have a verified account, be in the US, and the Facebook Mentions app on an iOS device to use the new two-person broadcast feature on Facebook Live currently.

“In June, we announced that we would soon enable people using Facebook Live to invite another person on Facebook to join their live video, broadcasting together and sharing the screen. We are now starting to roll out this new capability, starting with a small number of public figures and Pages. In the coming months, we will continue to make this more broadly available to people, public figures, and Pages using Facebook Live. We believe this will make broadcasts more fun and interactive and open up new possibilities for Live,” a spokesperson told The Next Web.

All other non-verified pages in the US will get the feature in September, and the worldwide rollout (including personal profiles) will be able to use the feature by October or November this year.

This new feature brings the ability to broadcast a video live with another user participating from a different location simultaneously. The broadcaster can invite multiple friends to join in on the live video conversation as well.

(Also see: Mark Zuckerberg Reveals Upcoming Features in First Facebook Live Q&A)

As mentioned, the social giant is also testing a new scheduling feature and MSQRD integration on Facebook Live. The Scheduling feature will allow broadcasters to send notifications to users that a Live video is about to begin. These pre-schedule notifications will lead users to a page, where the live stream will eventually play. If they end up there early, Facebook will let them sit in a virtual lobby-like room waiting for the Live video to start. It is also testing to bring the ability to go live directly on Facebook from its recently acquired MSQRD app. The video filter app brings many Snapchat-like masks for users, and this integration will essentially allow users to mask themselves with these funny filters before they go live on Facebook.