Facebook announced on their Developers blog today the “Facebook Live Stream Box”, a feature that any website owner or developer can install to enable Facebook users to connect, share, and post updates in real-time, with a particular focus on online live events.
Examples they suggest include “live streaming videos of concerts, speeches, sporting events, webcasts, TV shows, presentations, or webinars” as well as “multi-player games, or with any other experience where many people are visiting a website at the same time.”
This feature first emerged in January when Facebook teamed up with CNN.com for the 2009 US Presidential Inauguration, allowing you to view your friends’ Facebook status updates and comments side by side with real-time streaming video on CNN’s website. Since then they have worked with several established websites for other live broadcasts, including TNT’s NBA All-Star Game and many of the sites that covered the Oscars.
Facebook Live Stream Box used with TNT’s online broadcast of the NBA All-Star Game
Facebook says their Live Stream Box is easy to install and can be done so on any website, Facebook Page or Facebook application in under a minute. Instructions on how to install the Facebook Live Stream Box can be found on their Developer Wiki.
When installed, users login using Facebook Connect and the updates they share appear within the Live Stream Box as well as on their Facebook profiles and in their friends’ News Feed stream. Each post they make includes a link back to your website to encourage their friends to discover and discuss the live event with them.
“The Live Stream Box is built for scale and can handle millions of simultaneous viewers updating in real-time,” says Facebook, but they also point out that, “Information may move fast, so users will not necessarily see everything that comes through and cannot page through all the history.”
Interestingly, towards the bottom of their post Facebook give a big plug to UStream, seemingly indicating that streaming live video is not something Facebook is interested in offering themselves any time soon.
