Before Facebook made its burgeoning Live Video tool available to general users, it handed it over to celebs and influencers via its Mentions app. Now, Facebook is updating Mentions with even more features that enable its top publishers to schedule, moderate, and edit broadcasts.
Seeing as so many A-list celebs are just too damn busy to remember when to go live, Facebook is launching a new team prompts function that lets a pubic figure’s team create drafts of Live Video post descriptions — which can be reviewed and shared at a later date. The team can also schedule reminders for a celeb to go live or publish posts from the Mentions app at a specific time (for example, at a red-carpet event or awards show).
Facebook is also borrowing from its photo-sharing app, Instagram, for its new comment moderation tool. Similar to Instagram’s comment control feature — currently only available to celebs and business users on the app — Mentions now lets users blacklist words and phrases to prevent comments containing those words from appearing during the live-stream. “This moderation tool can help make live broadcasts friendlier and safer for broadcasters and viewers alike,” states Facebook in its announcement post.
Additionally, Facebook is giving celebs more formatting and editing options, including the ability to flip the camera horizontally or vertically, adjust brightness settings, and choose whether to mirror the picture. Having enabled verified Pages to share branded content earlier this year; Facebook claims the mirroring setting is useful for product or logo placement during sponsored broadcasts. Public figures will also be able to trim down any excess footage after publishing their broadcast — meaning they can, for example, remove all the time spent waiting for users to tune in at the beginning of a live-stream.
Finally, Facebook is testing a broadcaster status bar with a handful of users. The feature provides crucial information to the broadcaster such as audio level, connectivity, and battery status at the bottom of the video in real-time.
Facebook claims the features will be rolling out on its Mentions app over the coming weeks. Meanwhile, the rest of us will just have to cross our fingers in the hopes that the social network decides to make the handy updates available to its general user base at some point — or get busy getting verified.
