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Facebook Live now lets you add a friend to live stream together

Facebook Live now lets you add a friend to live stream together

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Facebook is now opening up the ability for users to invite a friend for a collaborative broadcast. Think of it like a Hangouts on Air via YouTube Live (what a mouthful!) — you can ask a Facebook friend to join and share the live stream screen even when you’re not in the same place. Facebook first offered this feature to public figures, but now it’ll be available for all users and Pages going live through the iOS app.

Both portrait and landscape modes are supported — in the former, the host will have the bulk of the screen real estate and their friend will show up in picture-in-picture; in landscape, the two user screens are split down the middle. Facebook did not say when the feature will arrive on Android devices.

Today’s update also comes with the ability for live-streaming users to start a direct message with one of their viewers so they can have a private chat during the broadcast. Facebook says these are some of the more “fun” and “social” recent additions to the feature. I’ll say, given that it had one of the most gruesome months in April after consecutive weeks of live-streamed murders. After those separate incidents, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg pledged to add 3,000 moderators to review videos and flagged reports.