With all the interactivity of a Live video but none of the impromptu quality, Premieres will soon fill Facebook Watch and the news feed. On Tuesday, October 2, Facebook announced the global launch of Premieres, video polls, and Top Fan badges after successfully testing the trio of video tools.
Premieres mixes features of Live and prerecorded videos. The videos are prerecorded, but they premiere at a set time with the same look and feel of a Live video. Like a Live video, fans can watch the film simultaneously with other fans and comment on the video. The idea is to give prerecorded videos some of the same levels of higher engagement as Live, a goal that the Premiere tool has achieved in early testing.
Premieres can be scheduled up to a week in advance — fans can opt in for an event reminder ahead of the premiere and share the post to invite friends to watch. The prerecorded video hits at the scheduled time accompanied by all the Live tools. After the scheduled Premiere, the video is available on the Page’s timeline as a regular video.
Facebook says Pages administrators will have most of the same video tools for Premieres — which means viewers could also spot ad breaks.
Premieres join the wide rollout of video polls, which allows viewers to respond to a question during a live video while software tallies up the responses. The polls are now rolling out to video creators using the Live API tool but will soon be added to on-demand videos, Facebook says.
Video creators will also soon be able to see who their biggest fans are with the global rollout of Top Fans. The feature puts a badge next to the names of users who are the most active on videos from that Page. Users have to opt-in once they’ve earned the badge, however, so the designation as a top fan is still optional.
Facebook says Top Fans earn the badge by being one of the most engaged fans — which includes watching videos, reacting, commenting, and sharing videos. Every Page won’t have the Top Fan option, however — Pages need to be using the video template and must have at least 10,000 followers.
