Facebook Willing To Pay Celebrities To Use Its Live Streaming

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Facebook has a new offer for celebrities. The social media network wants them to use its live streaming video service and is willing to pay them for it. Even though this is not the first time the social media giant has tried encouraging famous celebrities to use its service, this is the first time it is going to pay for the work, says a report from Re/code.

Facebook promoting Live among celebrities

Though the amount promised is not big, for a company that has previously stayed away from licensing content or paying creators, it still matters a lot. Facebook appears pretty serious with its new plan. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO, is reportedly in Los Angeles this week sharing plans with talent agencies. She is possibly trying to promote the reach of Live, which was rolled out last summer to celebrities first.

Confirming the meeting, a Facebook representative told Re/code, “We’re investing in live video as we think it’s a great fit for our platform — more and more people are choosing to watch and share live video on Facebook because it is personal, real-time and authentic.”

The social networking site will be working closely with these partners to learn the art of building the best Facebook Live experience and explore potential monetization models, the representative said. Apart from Hollywood names, the social networking site is also interested in signing up comedians and digital celebrities who have the knowledge to broadcast themselves on the site, the report said.

Will Twitter and YouTube be affected?

Facebook is confident that the service will create ad revenue in the long term, and it plans to share the revenue with the celebrities who help in generating it. The model is quite similar to what YouTube does with its individual content creators.

As of now, Facebook does not have any kind of ads on Live and also hasn’t decided how it wants them to show up there. Therefore, it is offering money to people who are talented in the field to earn some revenue from it. There is talk that the social media giant is offering six-figure sums to some famous people.

If Facebook’s plans bear the expected results, then it will likely impact Twitter, which has been drawing attention to its Periscope live streaming product as part of its turnaround push, and the same goes for YouTube.

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