Facebook Live will change social media – but in what way?

Users can now broadcast their lives to the world. But the real-time nature of events may prove to be beyond Facebook's scope

In August 2015, Facebook rolled out a new feature: the ability to broadcast live video streams from the company's app for power users, Facebook Mentions. Six months later, the feature, now branded Facebook Live, began a slow rollout for normal users, initially in the United States.

In classic Facebook style, the feature was late arriving, slow to roll out, and steadily demolished the competition. Meerkat, the company which ignited the live streaming craze, launched its mobile app in February 2015 and went meteoric at the South by Southwest Festival in March that year. But its time in the sun was limited: shortly after SXSW ended, Twitter subsidiary Periscope launched its own, technically superior, live-streaming service, eclipsing Meerkat almost instantly.