Twitter will livestream US President Donald Trump’s inauguration

Image: AP

  13 Jan 2017 , 13:43

Despite being excluded from the recently held Trump-tech meeting, Twitter will live-stream US President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration here on 20 January.

“Twitter and PBS @NewsHour Partner to Live Stream Coverage of Inauguration Day 2017 #golive,” @TwitterComms tweeted on Thursday.

According to a report in CNET, the six-hour coverage would be anchored by Judy Woodruff and feature several correspondents and analysts commenting on the swearing-in of Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence on the steps of the US Capitol.

“Streaming public broadcasting’s thoughtful coverage on Twitter will allow more Americans to experience the inauguration and join in discussion around it,” Sara Just, Executive Producer, NewsHour, was quoted as saying by the report.

She called the transition of power to a new president a ‘powerful moment’ in America’s democratic process.

IANS

The latest Facebook Live update will let you go live directly from your desktop

  12 Jan 2017 , 11:21

To give publishers additional control and flexibility over their broadcasts, Facebook has rolled out a feature enabling users to go live through a web browser to Pages.

“A variety of broadcast types – like daily vlogs – benefit from an easy, stable camera setup, and bringing Live to laptops and desktops will make this style of broadcasting easier,” an official statement said on Wednesday.

The social networking giant also rolled out a “Live Contributor” role in Pages, allowing admins to designate specific individuals to go live on behalf of a Page.

“This gives contributors the flexibility to stream great live content from a mobile device on behalf of a Page whenever it happens, while allowing the Page admin to maintain security and control over their Page,” Facebook explained.

To better understand how their content performs, Facebook is rolling out video metrics in coming weeks to give insights to celebrities, journalists and politicians.

Available for profiles with 5,000 or more followers, these metrics will include total minutes viewed, total number of views, and total engagement — reactions, comments and shares. It will also display aggregate information over seven, 30 and 60-day periods.

Video insights for profiles will also be available in the Mentions app over the coming weeks.

Facebook is also rolling out an update that lets users highlight a comment by pinning it to their video.

For users who want to share the link of their live videos, Facebook rolled out a permalink that directs people to a Page’s video content.

Facebook recently introduced a series of crossposting features to help publishers reach audiences across different Pages.

However, in the latest update, Facebook has extended the capabilities, allowing a publisher to post the recorded video to multiple Pages at the same time.

IANS

550mn users to be connected to 5G networks by 2022: Ericsson Mobility Report

By tech2 News Staff /  25 Nov 2016 , 18:06

Ericsson has released a new Ericsson Mobility Report forecasting the trends in telecom sector across the world. According to the report, there are two major trends that the networking giant can foresee. The first, obvious trend is the rise of 5G networks and consumers subscribing to the network. The second one being rise in mobile broadband to 6.1 bn unique subscribers by 2022.

The report points out that approximately half billion users will be connected to 5G networks by 2022 with almost quarter of all the mobile subscriptions opting for 5G connectivity.

Nearly 25 percent of all the 5G subscriptions in 2022 will come from North America, with the exact figure reaching 550 million. Asia Pacific will closely follow North America regarding the fastest growth of 5G subscribers with about 10 percent of the share. The Middle East and Africa will shift from predominantly GSM/EDGE only to approximately 80 percent of users being connected to WCDMA/HSPA and LTE. The report further points out that the mobile subscriber base is estimated to scale 6.8 billion with over 95 percent people being connected to 4G or 5G networks.

Ulf Ewaldsson, chief strategy and technology officer, Ericsson added, “Almost 90 percent of smartphone subscriptions are on 3G and 4G networks today and standardised 5G networks are expected to be available in 2020.” He further added that 5G would help Automation, IoT and big data.

The second major point discussed in the report was the rise of mobile broadband with approximately 6.1 billion unique subscribers by 2022. To set the context, the world added 84 million new mobile subscriptions during the third quarter of 2016 with India leading regarding net additions with 15 million, with China closely following with 14 million new mobile subscribers.

Ericsson also points out that the mobile video traffic will grow 50 percent every year through 2022, accounting for about 75 percent of all the mobile data traffic. Social Media traffic will be the second type of traffic that will dominate the mobile traffic growing 39 percent each year.

Currently, consumers are focusing on the live streaming aspect along with social networks to interact with friends, family and customers. Two in every five smartphone users are interested in live streaming apps in India and other high-growth countries like Brazil, Indonesia and Oman with the figure dropping to one in every five smartphone users in the United States of America.

Along with 5G and Mobile Broadband, IoT will also see significant growth, with approximately 29 billion devices connected to the internet, out of which 18 billion of the devices relating to IoT.

Internet Authority announces formal regulations and rules for live streaming industry in China

Image credit: Reuters

  04 Nov 2016 , 17:50

Chinese internet authorities have formalized controversial rules regulating the country’s fast-growing live-streaming video industry, in a move that strips out smaller competitors and places hard-line surveillance measures on leading firms. In an announcement posted on their website on Friday, the Cyberspace Administration of China grouped a handful of earlier restrictions under a final 24-point regulation that will come into effect on Dec. 1.

The rules require streaming services to log user data and content for 60 days, and work with regulators to provide information on users who stream content that the government deems threatening to national security or social order. Both users and providers are punishable under the regulations.

The law also codifies rules that ban online news broadcasting services from original reporting, requiring them to identify sources and non-selectively reproduce state-sanctioned information. China’s live video streaming industry has experienced booming growth in the past two years as dozens of video and social media sites scrambled to add the updated capabilities to their existing services.

Credit Suisse Group analysts estimate the industry could top $5 billion by the end of 2017, driven by cheap bandwidth and a growing population of young mobile users. The industry’s exponential growth attracted increased scrutiny from government authorities in 2016. In April, Chinese authorities called on 20 of the country’s top firms to join a self-criticism coalition, saying the industry was damaging China’s youth by proliferating content including pornography, fraud and terrorism.

On June 1 companies including Baidu Inc, Sina Corp, Sohu.com Inc and Youku Tudou, acknowledged new rules as part of the group, including requirements for real-name authentication. While the latest move places wide-reaching restrictions on the sites, it also signals an official sanctioning of the industry and its top players by Chinese officials.

Much like China’s earlier online video and music industries, the regulations put pressure on smaller competitors and bring larger firms into line with regulators, offering more growth opportunities for a smaller number of controllable companies.

“One of the things the government always wants to do is narrow the playing field to a smaller number of higher profile known entities, ideally ones that have a better track record of cooperating with the government,” says Mark Natkin, Managing Director at Marbridge Consulting.

“In the long run it’s actually relatively beneficial to the large companies.” In May the government handed down 588 licenses for prominent media outlets and live-streaming sites, effectively banning all unapproved services.

Reuters

Facebook is relatively new to live streaming, but here’s why it seems to have caught publishers’ fancy

#FACEBOOK LIVE

By Anirudh Regidi /  30 Sep 2016 , 08:15

Everyone’s agreed on one thing, video is the future of web and live streaming will form a significant chunk of that.

The current contenders are Facebook Live, YouTube Live, Twitch and Periscope. Twitch was among the first to establish itself as a streaming hub, but it did so by carving a niche for itself in gaming. YouTube Live came later and has found a fair amount of success. A great many events and even sports are streamed live on YouTube.

Facebook Live is a relatively new entrant but it seems to have picked up more steam than the rest of the services combined. In fact, it seems to be the platform of choice for advertisers and publishers alike.

Looking closer at the services, it’s easy to see why.

Twitch: It’s all about gaming

We’ll start with Twitch. As mentioned earlier, Twitch established a niche for itself as a source of all things gaming. If there’s a game you want to see streamed, you’ll find it on Twitch.

Streamers earn money when people subscribe to their stream, via ads and through donations. Twitch is a great place for streamers, but by definition, it’s niche makes it less suited to a larger audience.

Periscope: Limited audience

Periscope is in an odd spot. It’s not really carved a niche for itself yet, but it doesn’t have much going for it other than the vague association with Twitter. Publishers have found success with Periscope, which is why it can’t be dismissed outright, but compared to the likes of Facebook and YouTube, it’s among the also-rans.

The main problem with Periscope is reach. Twitter has 313 million active users, a number that pales in comparison to Facebook and YouTube’s billion strong user base. Further diminishing Periscope’s reach is the fact that only a fraction of Twitter users actually uses it. As of 2015, the total number of users stands at 10 million, with 2 million daily broadcasts. These numbers are huge, but insignificant in the larger scheme of things.

YouTube Live: Who’s my audience again?

YouTube Live is an extension of YouTube’s video platform and so far, is Facebook Live’s only real competitor. Its main advantage over others is reach, but it’s still not in the same league as Facebook. It’s estimated that YouTube has about a billion monthly active users(around 60-70 percent of Facebook’s total) and about 800 million users watch videos daily.

YouTube is a great platform for watching and streaming video to be sure, but it lacks the cohesion that a social networking platform like Facebook offers. You can watch a live stream, but that’s all you’re there for. Sharing with other users isn’t so easy, you can’t tag your friends or share it to your favourite group as easily and so on.

YouTube limits your interaction to that video. You can share it after the fact, but it’s still not as personal as Facebook’s offering.

Another major issue with YouTube Live is targeting. For advertises and publishers, targeting users is very hard, while Facebook works as a news feed of sorts and can push content as they see fit (they prioritise live videos in people’s news feeds). YouTube can’t do that. On YouTube, people will only see what they’re subscribed to or what they stumble across on their home page.

Anyone who’s had their eyes open will be aware of the fact that everything is shifting to mobile. Unfortunately for YouTube, only about 50 percent of their videos are seen on mobile devices. Facebook, again, has a lead on this front, with 75 percent of videos watched, including Live video, on mobile devices.

YouTube also doesn’t have as much data about its users as Facebook. They use cookies, so they can guess at who you are, but Facebook, which requires a login to use, knows who you are. It’s an important distinction that fine tunes targeting and advertisement like nothing else.

To add to all of these above problems, publishers and advertisers claim that YouTube’s charges are higher than Facebook’s.

Facebook Live is new to live-streaming, but it has the ability to leverage the information it’s collected on users to provide the most compelling live-streaming platform for publishers and advertisers. Coupled with a more focused approach to the medium, and a social network that encompasses the entirety of the online world, it does seem like Facebook will simply waltz away with the live-streaming audience.