The Rundown: Facebook Live Video, Medium Goes Big, NFL Drafts Twitter

Another week, another batch of updates from our favorite social media platforms. Here are our top stories and social media trends from the past week:

1. Live from Facebook, It’s Saturday Night – Last week, Facebook showed us they’re serious about getting into the live video space by announcing a broad rollout of the feature on Facebook. And they’re not just rolling out live video for all, they’re making live video easier to create, share and discover by including these features:
   • Going Live Capability. Users can now go live in Facebook Groups and Events
   • Live Reactions. Viewers can share their expressions and broadcasters can get feedback through Facebook’s reactions.
   • Replay Comments. This function basically records comments so viewers can see everything when they view a video after it’s broadcast.
   • Live Filters. These let users place filters on their broadcasts, and soon they’ll be able to doodle on your video while live (hi, Snapchat).
   • Improved Discoverability. The live video section on Facebook’s mobile app is given prime real estate, replacing the FB Messenger button. Here you’ll be able to find and search for live and non-live videos and go live yourself. Facebook has also released a Facebook Live Map on desktop, for a more visual way to explore public live broadcasts happening around the world.

2. Medium Going Large with Indie Publishers – On Tuesday, online publishing platform Medium announced “Medium for Publishers,” which makes it easier for publishers to share their content, migrate domains and branding and earn revenue. Some independent publishers—including The Awl, The Hairpin, Pacific Standard, The Black List and Femsplain—are all-in on Medium, publishing their content exclusively to the site. Four other pubs are in the pipeline and several sites, while not publishing exclusive to Medium, will begin to post original content there, like Time Inc’s Money and Fortune and Atlantic Media’s National Journal.

3. Twitter Gets the Hand-Off to Stream Thursday Night Football – We know Facebook was in the bidding war (and recently bowed out of talks) to get rights to stream Thursday night NFL games. Last week, Twitter came up with the ball. Next season, Twitter will digitally stream Thursday night games on Twitter for free to all, including those who aren’t registered Twitter users. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said “Twitter is where live events unfold and is the right partner for the NFL…there is a massive amount of NFL-related conversation happening on Twitter during our games.” So next season, you don’t just have to watch your friends live-tweet every down on Twitter, you can watch the game there, too.

4. Customer Service Improvements on Facebook Messenger – With 900 million active users, Facebook is rolling out the following new features to its Messenger to benefit businesses and people that want to contact them:
   • Page usernames are being used so users can easily identify businesses within Messenger.
   • Messenger links and codes can be shared so users can easily start a thread with your page.
   • Messenger greetings appear when a new thread is opened and helps to set the tone for the user sending the message.

The Last Word

Twitter adds another new button – You might notice a new button on Twitter that allows you to send a tweet by way of a private message.

AI helps Facebook users see – Last week we mentioned Twitter added image descriptions for the visually impaired, and this week Facebook has one-upped them.

Facebook’s F8 conference kicks off Tuesday – On April 12-13, Facebook hosts their annual F8 developer conference. Watch here or stay tuned for news in next week’s Rundown.

Here come the advertorials – Facebook is now allowing publishers to post branded content sponsored by their advertisers to their pages now and make it easier to tag both brands involved.

Reddit launches new iOS & Android apps – Upvote.