Alongside Facebook’s new Messenger Rooms feature that enables video calls up to 50 people, the company silently revealed it will make it possible for Facebook pages to monetize live streams.
“To support creators and small businesses, we plan to add the ability for Pages to charge for access to events with Live videos on Facebook – anything from online performances to classes to professional conferences.”, wrote the company in a blog post.
With this feature, users will have to purchase access to join a live stream. For now, the exact availability date of the feature remains unclear. Facebook’s blog post notes that the feature should be available in the coming weeks. Also, the social media giant now has an option that lets users mark events as “online-only”, which should be a measure taken in light of the ongoing pandemic and social distancing.
Meanwhile, Facebook is expanding Stars to more pages and countries. “Once you buy Stars you can send them to creators while they’re streaming, and they’ll earn 1 cent for every Star.”, explains Facebook.
Also, there’s no wonder that the internet speeds have gone down globally ever since the pandemic situation kicked in and people started staying home and consuming more internet data. With this in mind, Facebook will now let you listen to the audio-only version of the live stream.
Facebook mentions that some pages even share a toll-free number that lets interested listeners tune in to the audio version from any phone. What’s more, you can even watch them without a Facebook account since most public live videos are available on the web.
