Facebook Wants You Streaming Live Video From Whatever Device You Choose

Facebook has a live video feature that lets you broadcast video from your smartphone to your Facebook friends. But Facebook wants more live video content, so it’s going to let people broadcast from all kinds of devices, including drones.

Facebook is launching a Live video API, which will let developers broadcast directly to Facebook from any device, not just smartphones, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who presented onstage at the company’s annual F8 developer conference in San Francisco on Tuesday.

That includes high-powered TV cameras or drones. To get the point across, Facebook sent a drone to hover onstage behind Zuckerberg mid-keynote, broadcasting the audience onto the screen.

Facebook cares a ton about live video, which has become a priority of sorts for CEO Mark Zuckerberg. It wants live video to catch on with users, so it’s using a number of tricks to ensure users both create and see more live video.

The most Facebook-y of those tricks is that the company is prioritizing live video broadcasts in its News Feed algorithm so that they are more likely to be seen. It’s also paying celebrities and media properties to use the product, a way to grease the skids a bit and help get those influential creators using Live as often as possible.

If that wasn’t enough, it’s putting a live tab (quite literally) front and center in its iOS and Android mobile apps.

The new API could help entice bigger media players to go live, those that are used to producing video with a little more production power than a smartphone can capture.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Will you support Vox’s explanatory journalism?

Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple reasons that we can't rely only on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on.

First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead.

Second, we’re not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world — not just the people who can afford to pay for a subscription. We believe that’s an important part of building a more equal society. We can’t do that if we have a paywall.

That’s why we also turn to you, our readers, to help us keep Vox free. If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today?

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via