Shortly after rolling out its live video streaming feature globally, Facebook is changing its News Feed algorithm to ensure live videos appear higher in the feed.
The company said so in a blog post Tuesday, saying the adjustment will be made to account for the growing popularity of live video.
Facebook Live video is coming to Android
According to Facebook, people spend three times longer watching videos when they are live compared to videos that are no longer live.
“Now that more and more people are watching live video, we’re looking at live video as a new type of content – different from normal videos – and learning how to categorize it for people in the News Feed. In a First, we’re making a small update to News Feed so that Facebook Live videos are more likely to appear higher in News Feed when those videos are actually live, compared to once they are no longer live,” the post read.
Facebook says Pages won’t see any significant changes after this update.
A Facebook Live video is simply a streaming video, similar to the functionality offered by other live streaming services like Meerkat and Periscope, with viewers able to react and comment.
The feature was originally released on iOS in August 2015 for a small number of verified accounts and celebrities in the United States. Facebook rolled it out to everyone in mid-February and added Android support last week.
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