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Next generation of Facebook Live will let you live-stream 360-degree video

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Facebook Live has absolutely taken off as a way to interact with friends and fans of your pages, and Facebook isn’t slowing down in terms of its development. The company has just unveiled the next generation of Facebook Live, called Live 360, and as the name suggests, you’ll now be able to broadcast content in 360 degrees.

The launch of the new Facebook Live, which is a collaboration with National Geographic, is set for 12 P.M. ET Tuesday. The publication will broadcast live from its Utah-based Mars Desert Research Station, where scientists have been living for the past 80 days in artificial habitats that are aimed at replicating life on Mars.

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The research station itself is funded by the Mars Society, which is a group dedicated to one day making Mars as habitable as the planet we live on now. The Facebook live video will include a Q&A session with some of these scientists, so you can find out what living on the big red planet (or an emulation of it) is like.

As is often the case with features like this, not everyone will have access to them right away — Facebook will be rolling out 360-degree video support to select pages over the next few months, then it will begin rolling them out to all pages and profiles by the end of next month.

The move certainly makes sense, especially for Facebook. The social media giant has already enabling support for 360-degree video on its News Feed. The company has also been making one of the bigger pushes into virtual reality — it bought Oculus VR for a hefty $2 billion in March 2014.

Christian de Looper
Christian de Looper is a long-time freelance writer who has covered every facet of the consumer tech and electric vehicle…
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