Live video is coming to LinkedIn.
The social networking service aimed primarily at professionals is launching LinkedIn Live this week for businesses and individuals to broadcast to one another, according to TechCrunch. Streams are expected to include events such as conferences and product announcements, as well as Q&As from influencers on the platform. Other real-time content could also include earnings calls, graduate events, and awards ceremonies.
The company said livestreams have been the most requested feature for the site. Viewers will be able to “like” videos during the stream, while interactive elements will include the ability to submit questions or offer ideas via a comments section, similar to other social media platforms that offer livestreams.
The feature is launching in the U.S. in beta as an invitation-only offering, giving LinkedIn a chance to iron out any wrinkles before rolling it out to the entire community.
If you don’t receive an invitation but are keen to try out LinkedIn Live, the company will reportedly be posting a form on its site in the coming weeks so you can show your interest and hopefully move a few places up the line.
According to TechCrunch, Microsoft-owned LinkedIn is keen to include slickly produced livestreams as opposed to shoddily made productions that have no hope of keeping you engaged. With that goal in mind, it has partnered with a number of livestream services that will help creators produce something worth watching, or, at the very least, with decent production values.
Compared to others, LinkedIn has been slow to embrace video on its platform, with its first serious efforts only landing in 2017. More recently, in October 2018, it teamed up with video-streaming site Vimeo in a partnership that marked LinkedIn’s first end-to-end integration with any video platform. Besides offering an easy way for Vimeo users to push videos to LinkedIn, the feature also offers video analytics from LinkedIn so you can see how videos perform on the site in terms of views and engagement.
“Video has become one of the key drivers for member engagement on LinkedIn,” Peter Roybal, principal product manager at LinkedIn, said at the time, adding that the Vimeo integration was a bonus “for anyone who wants to gain more exposure and understand their reach to LinkedIn’s highly engaged professional audiences.”
