Ashish Sharma: Great time to go live

A friend fighting his fear of “peeing in public” struggled to spring a leak while live-streaming himself on Facebook. Most of the 200 people watching his ego-driven broadcast were aware of the performance anxiety that usually arose around other men. “I can’t do it. I’m never going to pee. I’m such an idiot,” he stammered to himself and then squirmed, even as hundreds waited to see the promise of an alcohol-induced man finally pour out his fears into the public toilet.
 
The spectators started pushing it in the Facebook feed.
 
Indeed, with the support of these 200-odd virtual souls, my friend had worked his way up the ranked scale of difficult locations — drain, wall, street lamp, neighbour’s doormat, and now a noisy public toilet — where his hands shook uncontrollably, and his voice shivered, and then he peed, a little. That was more than enough to explode wild cheers from across the world, people who had joined in the live broadcast from different time zones. That was also more than enough to make my shy-bladder buddy feel like a million dollars. Already, congratulatory calls had started pouring in. The video drew out huge applause.
 

Back in August, when the live-broadcast feature rolled out to all Indians, Facebook must never have anticipated such frivolous behaviour on its social media site. After all, the tech giant had taken pains to give the live-broadcast feature some gravitas and seriousness by paying news outlets and media companies to use its video service, according to a report. This may prove a wise gamble for 2017, considering there are over 2.5 billion active social media users worldwide and the number keeps going north at the rate of 9 per cent each year. The ad spend is rising even faster. According to Advertising Age, the ad spend on social media grew 55 per cent to $10.9 billion in 2016, up from the previous year's $7 billion. Plus, 41 per cent of TV viewers are planning to cut back on or completely chop off their subscriptions in the near future, a study by Focus Vision and Zanthus shows. To sum up, viewers could be moving from TV to social and digital, and networks and content providers will have no choice but to move there, too. Already, Indian Idol producer FremantleMedia has used Facebook Live (video-streaming service) for its web series titled Confessions — It’s Complicated; others are catching the whiff, too.
 
But there’s a hidden catch to the most promising trend on the internet: there is nothing inherently new about it. Broadcasting platforms Ustream and Livestream have already been running since 2007; according to reports, they found initial success by linking American soldiers abroad to their loved ones back home, and that’s that.
 
Occasionally, single events do drive serious traffic for them but there is no regular audience, no mainstream relevance, and most of all, no boom, nor pow to shake news cycles. The only difference now is live-streaming has become much more accessible due to the rise of social media such as Facebook, whose 1.79 billion users comprise a huge chunk of the planet’s population, 7.5 billion, which makes live-streaming potential that much hotter.
 
Also, what makes Facebook live-streaming a trend to watch is its ability to hook in users over the entire span of the video.

ashish.sharma@bsmail.in