LinkedIn finally adds live video streaming with LinkedIn Live

LinkedIn is the biggest social platform dedicated to professionals and hirings. With around 600 million customers, many have wondered what will LinkedIn do next? Last year, LinkedIn added support for sharing videos on the platform. 18 months later they have now added support for live video streaming.

While live video streaming has been available on platforms like Facebook and Twitch, many have wondered why LinkedIn jumped so late to the party. Unlike Facebook, LinkedIn will use live videos for Q&As, events, conferences, earnings calls, awards ceremonies, product announcements, and similar things. They hope to avoid competition by targeting a different niche. To produce quality content, they have partnered up with third-party services like Wirecast, Switcher Studio, Wowza Media Systems and more.

The latest feature is powered by Microsoft’s Azure services. Since Microsoft’s acquisition of the company, it has maintained its distance. Case in point, the notable absence of Skype, which is quite popular in the business community. This will be the first time that LinkedIn and Microsoft will be working on something together.

Last year’s addition of videos saw ad revenue soar by 30 percent. Talking to TechCrunch, Pete Davis revealed, “Video is the fastest growing format on our platform right now, and the one most likely to get people talking.” Live video streaming has been one for the most requested features on the platform. This was confirmed by Davis himself, “Live has been the most requested feature.”

The feature is being rolled out as a beta to select users in the US. Soon, they will let others use the new feature too. Regarding revenue and monetization, not a lot is known as they are not even showing ads in live videos. It is possible that they might charge for specific events or webinars but the plans were not discussed.