In social media, an “instant response” is a highly sought after concept for businesses. On Facebook, pages will be rated on how quickly their response time is to a message. We’re told to reply to everything if possible. The pressure is on to be quicker, more precise, and we need to have a smile while doing it. There are new ways to communicate being produced all the time, but not all of them are necessarily conducive to proper business tactics. Right now, the internet is at an interesting transition period. The old days of instant messaging companies like AIM and ICQ are long gone. Yet audiences are craving ways to simulate a real face-to-face, live conversation. How can we have the types of conversations we crave while still integrating progressive technology? Social media now has answers.
Videos are in demand more and more. However, just because we post a video, it doesn’t make it any deeper of a form of communication than text or images. These videos were uploaded after the actors have left the stage. It’s a snippet of the past. After all, it’s not like we can necessarily communicate with a video, right? Well, new apps are starting to change all that. They’ve integrated live video feeds for users to watch and even interact with via text or emojis. This is the start of a brand new way to communicate both for business and personal uses.
Periscope, proudly owned by Twitter, is one of these apps. When you sign up for this new service, you can integrate all your Twitter contacts that are already periscoping and see what they’re up to. There’s already a large following on this app and you’ll be able to join a live broadcast any time of the day. Once you find one that’s interesting, just tune-in and you’ve become an audience member to a LIVE show. This doesn’t mean they can see you, but those running the show are being broadcasted onto your smartphone in real time. You can see what’s happening exactly as it happens.
Now, since they don’t see you, you have the opportunity to send a question via text onto the constantly moving chat board that streams below the video feed. This is a great avenue for those who want to do a Q&A or unveil a product.
Facebook has recently adapted this idea and have now created a sister site called Facebook Live. Not exactly as original of a name as Periscope, but it’ll do. It has the same essential features Periscope has with a few added bonuses like drawing on the screen and other fun ways to reach out to those hosting the broadcast.
Yet one of the most important sides of these new apps is that while watching these people LIVE is the selling point, you can always go back and watch the reruns. Your feeds will be catalogued and available for all to see.
As you can see, there is still room for real life conversations in social media. This is only the beginning of this movement, and we predict that there will be an explosion of new video-centric innovations to the social media frontier in the coming months and years.
Have you used these two apps yet? What are your thoughts?
