Social media and the war with television

“Live TV” on social networks

Live Video is a feature of Facebook that allows users to record and broadcast live on Facebook for friends to watch. This feature was launched a few months ago but is only limited to celebrities or limited Pages. Facebook's Live Video feature allows users to start broadcasting live video of their surroundings in real time on Facebook. Live video also supports adding a short description and sending the video to multiple people at once, or can limit the friends who can watch the video.

In addition, during the video streaming process, users can also see how many people are watching their videos and read other people's comments about their videos. On April 7, 2016, Facebook continued to "renovate" this function with a prominent position on its mobile application interface, replacing the position of the previous Messenger (messaging) icon. Facebook organized a whole page that gathered attractive live broadcast content, a live broadcast map in 60 countries... New update, Facebook applied Live to Groups or Events.

Accordingly, Facebook users can broadcast live videos to a Group or Event of their choice. However, Facebook is currently limiting live video broadcasts to no more than 30 minutes and only supports users on the iOS platform, not yet supporting users on the Android platform. Rival social network Twitter is also showing no less competitiveness. On April 6, the media massively reported that Twitter won the right to broadcast live 10 matches of the American professional football league (NFL) for $10 million.

The entire match will be broadcast on Twitter so users can both watch and comment. According to observers, this is a big win for Twitter, paving the way for more broadcasts of TV shows and other attractive tournaments. By broadcasting major events live, Twitter will gain more users and compete better with other social network rivals.

Big challenge for television

The launch of Live Video by the two leading social networks is considered by the technology world to be an unprecedented challenge for social networks to the television industry. According to Facebook's own research, a live video will be viewed three times more than a regular video because "more and more people choose to watch and share live video on Facebook because it is personal, immediate and authentic". "It's great that live video has become a two-way news channel. Viewers are no longer passive recipients," said Karunamurthy, a former YouTube engineer and now CEO of NOM.

According to him, viewers can interact, share immediately (with the source) and become part of the news process. This feature is superior to the current passive way of receiving information, between the public and the press - television. It can be said that Facebook and Twitter are creating billions of "TV stations" "broadcasting live online" every day. For example, Facebook, with about 1.6 billion regular users per month as of early 2016, is becoming the "TV station" with the largest number of "reporters" and viewers in the world.

Now any social media user can become a “TV reporter”, broadcasting “live” an event or any content they like, sharing it with friends, relatives or fans who subscribe to their account. Each social media user can develop their personal account into an online TV channel with live video content broadcast at the moment of the event to viewers.

Tech experts believe that Facebook has surpassed traditional television stations by directly targeting the "weaknesses" including: the ability to interact with live broadcast content from viewers, the ability to "live" widely so that Facebook also collects a huge amount of data and information, everywhere, at any time, and with the simplest tool: a smartphone and an Internet connection.

No television station can afford to hire millions of reporters and cameramen to visit every corner of the world, but Facebook and Twitter can. In addition, with the potential to attract a huge audience, Facebook and Twitter are enticing advertisers to switch from traditional television to online television. These social networks have prepared active support tools and valuable resources for advertisers to collect statistics and measure from viewer views, reactions and behavior to their content, comments, and personal or group account information.

However, the assertion that “live video on social media will kill traditional journalism” may be a hasty and unfounded conclusion. Readers still need quality information, high credibility, and multi-dimensional judgment. These are factors that live, sometimes innocuous, videos on Facebook or Twitter cannot provide. In addition, the pressure may come to the press team itself, when they are responsible for taking advantage of new tools to report news.

According to Congluan.vn