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Facebook to Favor Live Videos Over Recorded Videos in News Feed

facebook live video

Facebook announced it will now begin to place live videos higher up in peoples’ news feeds while those videos are live, compared to afterward when they’re just recordings. Live videos are viewed over three times more when they’re live versus when they’re no longer live. From now on when videos are live they will be treated as their own content type with greater ranking signals than recorded videos.

“Now that more and more people are watching Live videos, we are considering Live Videos as a new content type… As a first step, we are making a small update to News Feed so that Facebook Live videos are more likely to appear higher in News Feed when those videos are actually live, compared to after they are no longer live.”

At last count, Facebook was serving up 8 billion video views per day. The company did not break down how many of those views were for live videos versus recorded videos. It would be interesting to know just how many views live videos are receiving per day following this recent announcement from Facebook.

Live videos may also be rising in popularity due to the fact that more people than ever are able to produce them. Initially, live video was a feature reserved for verified pages and notable public figures. The feature eventually rolled out to all iOS users this past December, and just last week became available to Android users.

The company says page owners should not expect to see significant changes as a result of this update. However, I’m not sure if that’s entirely accurate. If a page frequently broadcasts live video it sounds like it would greater placement in its audience’s news feeds going forward. I believe it would be more fair to say everyone’s mileage may vary with this update.

Featured Image Credit: weedezign / Shutterstock.com

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SEJ STAFF Matt G. Southern Senior News Writer at Search Engine Journal

Matt G. Southern, Senior News Writer, has been with Search Engine Journal since 2013. With a bachelor’s degree in communications, ...

Facebook to Favor Live Videos Over Recorded Videos in News Feed

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