Facebook now lets you broadcast live video from a Desktop PC

Facebook Live is making the jump from phones to computers, as Facebook announced today that it’s opening up its live-streaming service to desktop and laptops in addition to smartphones and mobile devices for all its users.

It’s a feature that’s been available to Pages for a while, but Facebook is opening it up to anyone with a Facebook account. Users will be able to simply broadcast straight from a built-in webcam. More advanced streamers can use external camera hardware or streaming software to make high-quality broadcasts with multiple cameras, on-screen graphics, and title cards.

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This could be a good for people who need to teach their friends or family members how to use a program like Photoshop, or play a game like the PC version of Grand Theft Auto 5 by livestreaming it on Facebook live.

I think game streamers who got banned from Twitch and YouTube can now use Facebook to stream their gameplay, and ask people to donate money to their Bitcoin, Paypal, and other payment accounts if they choose to make money from their game stream.

Demon_Skeith said:

Guess this cuts out the need for another app?

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User only need a modern web browser like Firefox, Chrome, and Opera, and a Facebook user account, so users don't need to install a seperate streaming app according to the full article.

kingcool52 said:

Facebook are definately trying to become the main stop for everything but I think it has come a bit late. Personally I don't see this working much, I mean a few banned Twitch streamers could use it but the revenue just won't be there because of the difficulty of having to manually donate.

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Facebook is one of the biggest free social networking membership sites on the internet. Streamers can have a large audience of millions to billions of Facebook users, and non-Facebook guest visitors who are watching their streams while not being logged into Facebook, or watching their stream on an embedded Facebook video player on another website like a forum or blog. If a thousand Facebook members, who watch their stream, donate $1 a month, streamers will make $1000 a month. Facebook may also have an advertising sharing program to share some of the ad money from ads on the video and user profiles with video streamers.

Facebook Messenger now let you send money according to Facebook Messenger Now Lets You Send Money With Transferwise , but you still need to use a credit card, Paypal, or other supported payment account to send money.

A lot of the big online video creators, make money from sponsorship who pay money for making videos about the sponsors video game, smartphone, or service like web hosting. Some video creators and streamers now sell their own products like apps, books, self-recorded music, movies, t-shirts, and hats. If you have a lot of viewers, you can make money from sponsors, or sell your own products.

erich said:

That is actually very interesting. I could see this being beneficial for a group page that is for education or maybe a gamer/streamer going live on facebook at the same time as Twitch.

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I agree this could be useful for groups pages where there are members from different social networks like Facebook, Instagram live, Twitch, YouTube live, and Periscope/Twitter live video.

But, the streamer will need a very fast internet connection, and a faster computer for using many streaming sites, and apps at once which may use up a lot of RAM, and CPU resources to run many streams at once.