Joining other social media platforms already in this run, LinkedIn has launched its own live video broadcasting service called LinkedIn Live. LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft, is commonly recognised as the social media network for professionals and work-related purposes. With around 600 million people across the globe using it, LinkedIn is probably the largest of its kind of social media platforms.
Along with Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter, who all have some kind of live video streaming available, now there is a live streaming solution by LinkedIn as well. Since February, this service has been made available on the website in the USA. The company has finally caught on to the trend of videos as a superior tool for marketing, informing and connecting with people online.
In this initial phase of LinkedIn Live, the company is trying to guide the content streamed in a certain professional direction such as company announcements, live conferences, Q&As and other similar events or activities. The live videos have an open comments section below and can be “liked” by the viewers, similar to many other live stream platforms. The focus here is on the interactions between users and timeliness of the stream to achieve the best results for its users. In another effort to achieve this goal, LinkedIn has collaborated with outside third party vendors like Wowza Media Systems and Wirecast, to enhance the experience of going live on LinkedIn. This encourages better production and thus, better quality video output on the platform.
LinkedIn’s regular video feature itself is only 17 months old and with this new feature, they hope to cater to more of their user’s needs along with getting more people interested in the platform. With users requesting for the live video streaming on LinkedIn for quite some time now, the company has finally given in. Pete Davies, the director of Product Management at LinkedIn stated: “Video is the fastest growing format on our platform right now, and the one most likely to get people talking.” Giving them another incentive to venture into live videos, the possibility of LinkedIn monetising video content to earn more revenues is also present.
Despite being a few steps behind in the digital market, Linked has its own niche carved out and is doing things at its own pace while learning from other trailblazing examples. The influence of Facebook Live’s popularity and success over this new service is obvious from its mobile user interface which is very similar to that of Facebook Live. Similarly influenced by another very successful platform, Snapchat, LinkedIn is also trying out the feature of putting up stories on individual profiles. This live streaming solution by LinkedIn is most likely to be launched on the platform across the globe shortly after the USA.
