Facebook Live gets new Live Chat With Friends, Live With features

If you are a user of Facebook Live, you have a few new features to look forward to. Today Facebook has announced that it is adding Live Chat With Friends and expanding access to Live With, each of which increases the ways you can engage with your friends during a live broadcast. Live Chat With Friends will allow you to enter into a private conversation with your buddies while you are watching a live feed together, though the feature is in only in testing on mobile in certain countries for now. Live With has been a feature for a while, but so far only so-called "public figures" have been able to use it. Now the feature is available to everyone, though it is limited to iOS devices for the time being.
Facebook has been pretty prodigious with updates and new features for all its various platforms this year. Most of these new features seem to be focusing on Messenger, but since Facebook Live only launched for Android last year I'm not too surprised that Facebook is still trying to figure out what tools the platform needs. I can't say that I use Facebook that much, but for some the various means of communication provided by the social media giant present a tremendous convenience, and the two new additions to the Facebook Live video communication platform could be immeasurably useful.

Live Chat With Friends is a pretty simple tool. Previously while watching Live, you were able to talk in a global chat for the stream or go the extra mile to communicate with friends via another method. Now if you have a group of people watching something you'll be able to engage in a private conversation with them during a public broadcast. You won't even have to worry about having to use another service to do it or risk your communications getting lost in the public feed. And the conversation can continue after the broadcast ends in Messenger. If you and your pals regularly watch the same live feeds, this could really come in handy.

Live With has been a thing for a while, though before now not everyone could use it, as it was limited to public figures. It allows you and a friend to do a picture-in-picture thing during a live broadcast, so people can watch more than one person at the same time. It might come in handy for things like a public interview, impromptu announcement, or if you have some other tremendous need to make a conversation public. You can look over here for a full walkthrough on how to get started if you are interested in trying it. Unfortunately, it is iOS only for now, but I would assume that Android is likely to follow in the future.
Facebook certainly isn't fooling around when it comes to building out new features. You can love or hate the company and its various products. But, no matter how you look at it, the company and developers are putting an incredible amount of work into everything they do. Both of these new features are likely to come in handy for individuals that have invested in using Facebook's social platforms.

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