LinkedIn believes the video to be the fastest-growing format on its platform among its various content formats and has taken a decision to launch LinkedIn live video that would give users and organizations the power to broadcast real-time video to select groups or to the LinkedIn world as a whole.
LinkedIn is well known as the social network for the working world on a global scale and has almost 600 million users.
LinkedIn Live would launch in beta first in the U.S. and would be invite-only. Gradually, LinkedIn would post a contact form for users interested in experiencing this new feature. In the near future, all users will be able to create LinkedIn Live videos.
LinkedIn plans to initially broadcast subject matter that includes influencer and mentor-led conferences, product announcements, Q&As, office hours from a big tech company, earnings calls, graduation and awards ceremonies, and much more.
In its keenness to develop this feature, the company has selected several third-party developers of live broadcasting streaming services with which creators would work to enhance the live video segment. These include Brandlive, Socialize, Switcher Studio, Wirecast, and Wowza Media Systems, “with more to come in the following weeks,” as stated by LinkedIn. Furthermore, Microsoft’s Azure Media Services is going to provide encoding as its technical partner.
Microsoft-owned LinkedIn had brought in its initial video services as late as 2017; so LinkedIn is a late bloomer regarding the live video service compared to its other SNS competitors such as Twitter and Facebook. LinkedIn has witnessed a huge increase in traffic and revenues from (non-live) video on its platform in the last 17 months.
Video is the fastest growing format on our platform right now, and the one most likely to get people talking – Pete Davies, the director of product management at LinkedIn
However, neither Davies nor LinkedIn mentioned any specific figures in terms of how many video creators or viewers there are, except that the feature has been used by “millions” of LinkedIn members.
Davies added that “Live has been the most requested feature,” with most social networking platforms having already introduced the live video feature and its functionality much earlier.
He talked about how users can “like” videos as they are being broadcast, where the likes would float along with the screen. Viewers would be able to ask questions and make suggestions and comments in real-time. Moreover, hosts are enabled to control the comments in real-time so as to ward off harassment.
Moreover, the video platform is proving to enhance engagement and revenue growth for the company.
Video advertisements reportedly earn 30 percent more comments per impression than non-video ads. LinkedIn members, too, have been found to spend almost three times more time watching video ads compared to time spent with static Sponsored Content.
LinkedIn has not put forward further comments on future monetization plans. They are not even going to include video ads in LinkedIn Live videos for the time being:
That will come down the road, but for right now we are focused on awesome use cases…This could even be a way to try out some new ideas – Peter Roybal, head of video product management
LinkedIn is looking for unique content in its newest feature and has a good opportunity to ways of monetizing the content beyond ads.
