{"id":4632,"date":"2015-10-14T17:01:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-18T17:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salesforce.com\/?p=4632"},"modified":"2023-10-18T17:36:01","modified_gmt":"2023-10-18T17:36:01","slug":"live-streaming-and-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salesforce.com\/ca\/blog\/live-streaming-and-social-media\/","title":{"rendered":"How Live-Streaming Is Changing The Face Of Social Media"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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This article by Kim Garst is part of our <\/i>Blogtober <\/i><\/a>event, which features blog posts written by industry influencers in support of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.<\/i><\/p>\n

It feels like live-streaming apps, such as Periscope and Meerkat<\/a>, have been around much longer than just 6 months. While live video has been around for many years, these apps have brought live-streaming into the limelight.<\/p>\n

In just a few short months, Periscope alone has accumulated over 15 million registered users. While this may seem like a drop in the bucket compared to Facebook\u2019s 1 billion users, consider this: 12 months after Mark Zuckerberg registered thefacebook.com, they had just over 1 million<\/i> users registered. True, that was a different time\u2014all we knew of social media back then was MySpace.<\/p>\n

Still, consider how quickly a much newer network has grown: Launched in October 2010, Instagram reached the 1 million user mark in just 2.5 months. It reached 10 million users in one year. Periscope took just 5 months to reach 10 million users.<\/p>\n

The trajectory Periscope is on is incredible. Remember, too, that these numbers are just for Periscope, not live-streaming apps as a whole. If Periscope has already reached 15 million users, you can imagine the total number of users of all live-streaming apps in 2016 and beyond.<\/p>\n

A Brief History of Live-Streaming<\/b><\/h3>\n

Live-streaming isn\u2019t new; in fact, it\u2019s been around in one form or another since the 1990s. Sites like Ustream<\/a> and Livestream<\/a> have been around for years and offer many of the same functions as Periscope and Meerkat.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t even Meerkat founder Ben Rubin\u2019s first foray into live-streaming. Rubin first entered the live-streaming market in 2013 with an app called Yevvo, which he shut down shortly after reaching the 300,000 user mark. In its place he launched Air, another live-streaming app that offered the ability to broadcast privately, rather than to the general public. While Air still exists, it certainly hasn\u2019t reached the level of notoriety of its sister app, Meerkat.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s different now? Why did these similar apps not quite make it into the mainstream just a year or two ago, while Periscope and Meerkat have taken off at breakneck speed? One possible reason is the perfect storm of technology and accessibility. <\/b><\/p>\n

Never before have we experienced the perfect overlap of smartphone technology and the existence of social networking sites. It makes live streaming almost effortless. The prevalence of high-quality smartphones with front-facing cameras have made it possible for users to shoot excellent live video from virtually anywhere. And the integration of Periscope with Twitter has almost guaranteed a built-in audience for users\u2014at least for those users who are already on Twitter.<\/p>\n

This overlap seems to have laid the groundwork for live streaming to explode in popularity after so many years of trying. In a New York Times interview<\/a>, Chris Sacca, founder and chairman of Lowercase Capital and an early investor in Twitter, summed it up perfectly: \u201cAll of a sudden, the world\u2019s pockets are full of good cameras and good screens with good data plans and good social platforms to let everyone know you\u2019re broadcasting.\u201d<\/p>\n

But what is it about live-streaming that\u2019s so appealing to people? Even with the convergence of technology and accessibility, there must be something more. How has it gained such incredible momentum in such a short period of time? To answer these questions, we need to look at the unique benefits and challenges that come with live-streaming.<\/p>\n

Benefit: It humanizes people and brands in a way images and recorded video can\u2019t.<\/b><\/h3>\n

Facebook seems to be a place where people share only their best, most polished moments. Images are cropped, edited, and perfected before being uploaded, and 36 per cent of people admit they alter their selfies<\/a>. Only the best and most enviable moments of life are shared, giving the illusion that what\u2019s shared on social media is a glimpse into what a user\u2019s life is actually like.<\/p>\n

Live-streaming, on the other hand, doesn\u2019t allow for editing or \u201ccherry picking\u201d the best parts. What you see is what you get, and there are no second takes. I think, as a culture, we\u2019re ready for a bit of reality! We want to know that the people we\u2019re watching \u201cbehind the screen\u201d are real. That they aren\u2019t perfect, just like the rest of us.<\/p>\n

Benefit: It allows us to participate in something bigger than ourselves.<\/b><\/h3>\n

To illustrate this example, a three recent history-making live streams come to mind, and they\u2019re all from a rather unexpected source: NASA. Typically when I write and talk about social media, NASA doesn\u2019t factor into the conversation. But the administration has become a live-streaming powerhouse:<\/p>\n