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After Facebook, Twitter and Instagram,  Microsoft’s LinkedIn is getting into the league of video live streaming service by launching ‘LinkedIn Live’, this week, as reported by TechCrunch. This feature will allow people and organizations to broadcast real-time video to selected groups or the entire LinkedIn audience. Though, it’s still not clear when will LinkedIn make it possible for everyone to create LinkedIn live videos.

LinkedIn Live will be rolled out to selected U.S. users via invite-only for the initial beta phase. Eventually, LinkedIn will also post a contact form for the users who want to apply for accessing this service. The initial live content that LinkedIn hopes to broadcast would include conferences, product announcements, Q&As and other events led by mentors and influencers, earnings calls, graduation and awards ceremonies, and more.

LinkedIn is partnering with several third-party developers of live broadcasting streaming services including, Wirecast, Switcher Studio, Wowza Media Systems and more for creating and posting more polished live video on LinkedIn. Microsoft’s Azure cloud media product will be handling the encoding services for LinkedIn Live.

The reason behind bringing LinkedIn Live

LinkedIn introduced its first native video features in 2017 and within 17 months, LinkedIn has seen a boost in traffic and revenues from videos on its platform.

Pete Davies, the director of product management at LinkedIn, said, “Video is the fastest growing format on our platform right now, and the one most likely to get people talking. Live video has been a big request—not least, I’d wager, because it is such a prominent part of how video is being used on other social platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, putting the functionality front of mind.”

Other than user requests, there might be more reasons to add this feature. The reasons could possibly be engagement and revenue generation. LinkedIn has generated revenue around videos via video advertising so far.

During Microsoft’s last quarterly earnings, the company reported that revenues at LinkedIn were up 29 percent, with a reference to growing its ads business specifically. In a statement to TechCrunch, LinkedIn said, “Video ads earn 30 percent more comments per impression than non-video ads and that LinkedIn members spend almost three times more time watching video ads compared to time spent with static Sponsored Content.”

As content is in the priority of LinkedIn Live, there are chances that the company might explore other ways of monetizing the content beyond ads. For instance, the company could charge viewers for unique experiences like conferences or for making certain Live events. It could also charge users for broadcasting content.

LinkedIn might even launch Stories feature soon

Last year, the company planned to work on implementing stories feature for the platform. The company plans to start off with “Student Voices” for university students in the U.S. This would allow students to post short videos to their Campus Playlist, which includes short 30-45 seconds videos made by college students.

LinkedIn is possibly moving in the direction of rich content, with live streaming videos and stories the company might see a major benefit in terms of revenue and data. These live streaming videos will create an impact on the reach of the platform and also might help the platform’s premium subscription in near future.

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