Down Time

Facebook Live is now available on the social network's site.

Facebook has launched a live-streaming channel designed to provide its users with content detailing what's happening at the company's headquarters.

Dubbed Facebook Live, the new service is basically a PR channel for the company. According to a representative, Facebook Live "is a natural extension of our blog and is a way to communicate with our users more directly." Facebook will be airing interviews with people that stop by its headquarters, highlighting its new products, and trying to capture the "activity already happening at Facebook." Whereas it was doing all this before with text, now it wants to up the ante with video.

Content will be available on Facebook Live all day, every day. When shows are live, Facebook users can comment and potentially have their questions answered by the hosts. After a show airs, users will be able to go back to the Facebook Live page and watch a rerun of it at their convenience. Facebook Live can be embedded into other Web sites, or users can add a Facebook Live page to their profile pages to have quick access to the service.

It's worth noting that Facebook isn't getting in the content business to compete with services like Ustream or Livestream, which enable users to create their own live-streaming channels and push content out to viewers. Instead, Facebook Live (which is powered by Livestream, in fact) seems to be little more than a way for the company to pat itself on the back and tout its products.

But driving the point home that Facebook isn't getting into the video-streaming business seemed to be paramount to the social network. A Facebook representative was quick to point out that the social network "has no plans to get into content production."