From Photography to Live User-Generated Video

We are officially one step closer to our inevitable future of scrolling past 7 billion self-directed Truman Shows. In just under four years, we have witnessed a string of transformational leaps in human communication; from third-person perspective photography to live, user-generated, first-person video. This revolution in social media has profound implications for strategic communicators, brands and storytelling. 

"We've become bored with watching actors give us phony emotions. We are tired of pyrotechnics and special effects. While the world he inhabits is, in some respects, counterfeit, there's nothing fake about Truman himself. No scripts, no cue cards. It isn't always Shakespeare, but it's genuine. It's a life." – The Truman Show

Three years ago, there was roughly an hour of transition time between a photo being taken and that photo being published to a digital audience. With the explosion of Instagram and Snapchat, those photos increasingly turned into videos and the transition time was cut to about 2 minutes. Now, with Facebook Live, Snapchat and YouTube Live, there is zero delay between an event and publication. Video storytelling for the masses is now truly frictionless.

2013: Third-Person Perspective Photography (~60 minute publishing delay)

One of my first events to cover as the Social Media Specialist at Brown University was Convocation. The event consists of a procession of new students through the Van Wickle Gates to mark the official opening of the semester. I coordinated with the campus photographer to get “The Shot” of new students taking their first steps onto campus. The photographer scouted out the best camera angles and snapped away as the students walked onto campus. I received a dropbox of photos shortly after, where the photos were downloaded, organized, tagged, edited, and then uploaded to a Facebook album. About an hour after the event took place, a global audience began Liking, Commenting and Sharing, resulting in an incredible amount of engagement. Perfect! Right? But, something called Instagram walked in with those students.

2014: First-person, user-generated Instagram photos (~2 minute publishing delay)

Cut to 2014 and Instagram was exploding across campus. Although desirable, it's impossible to have an omnipresent photographer, but, thanks to Instagram, I could “employ” thousands of photographers, who, from their first-person perspectives, snapped photos of everything, all day, everyday. Local, national and international audiences received an intimate look at college life. A deluge of photos came in consisting of lectures, events, athletics, weather phenomena, studying on the College Green, scenery around Providence, RI, and of course, the walk through the Van Wickle Gates.

~40,000 Instagram photos have since been submitted to #BrownUniversity. This number could easily be doubled if you include the “Location” geofenced area of Brown University and Providence. Instagram revolutionized content sharing almost overnight, with eMarketer predicting that more than a third of mobile phone users will be up and running on Instagram by the end of 2016.

2015: First-person, user-generated Snapchat videos (~2 minute publishing delay)

Google launched on desktop, Facebook launched on laptop and Snapchat launched on mobile. Snapchat is huge. After refusing to be bought by Facebook for $3 billion back in 2013, it seems like Snapchat is leading the mobile video publishing revolution with a chip on its shoulder. As Mark Zuckerberg did back in 2004, Snapchat is also catering directly to college students with Campus Stories. Facebook is trying to keep up.

Snapchat may have realized that even though Facebook is considered "new media," it's actually 12 years old. Although Mark Zuckerberg's refrain is "mobile-first," Snapchat was truly born out of mobile. This is a huge value added for Snapchat, as Facebook and YouTube play catch-up redesigning antiquated display functionality for video.

2016: Live, first-person, user-generated videos (Zero publishing delay)

One of the biggest differences between Facebook Live and Snapchat is existing audience size. Where a celebrity or influencer can "go live" to their millions of loyal Facebook followers, Snapchat requires some work for influencers to build comparable audience sizes. But, incredibly, Snapchat is always full of surprises, as it already rivals Facebook with 8 billion daily video views.

Livestreaming has been around for a long time, with Livestream, Justin.tv and Ustream launching in 2007. YouTube was also early to the game of livestreaming with Hangouts On Air. The big difference between livestreaming 1.0 (webcasts, UStream & YouTube) and 2.0 (Facebook Live & Periscope) is outbound vs. inbound. Traditionally, promotion of your webcasts required pulling people to a dedicated website via a seemingly endless barrage of reminders to an audience that will probably be grabbing a coffee at that specific time anyway.

Livestreaming 2.0 is a game changer because Facebook Live is being pushed to where people are scrolling at that very moment. Almost overnight, Facebook admins are now able to “go live” in the News Feeds of their hundreds, thousands, or millions of subscribers. As Wi-Fi continues to improve, so will livestreaming from smartphones. Just wait until this feature is not limited exclusively to brands and thought leaders.

My prediction is that once Facebook Live is turned on for everyone, Facebook will not only catch up with Snapchat, but will leapfrog Snapchat’s premise of “near-realtime” and make user-generated content truly live.

"Live is like having a TV camera in your pocket. Anyone with a phone now has the power to broadcast to anyone in the world. When you interact live, you feel connected in a more personal way. This is a big shift in how we communicate, and it's going to create new opportunities for people to come together." – Mark Zuckerberg

Now, all we have to do is figure out how to turn off those “Is Now Live” Facebook notifications. Leave a Comment! How has your brand or company leveraged live video?