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Facebook uses Lollapalooza to test a new live-streaming feature

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Facebook is constantly testing out new features and new approaches as it tries to stay ahead in the social media game, and it’s using the Lollapalooza music festival for its newest experiment. Photos, videos, and posts from users and artists are being curated together in a live stream that U.S. users can check in and view from anywhere.

As The Wall Street Journal reports, the new feature taps into the Place Tips functionality Facebook introduced back in January. Place Tips show you check-ins and posts from your friends at a particular location, but a regularly updated live stream and the ability to view it from anywhere haven’t been tested before. “This Place Tips Lollapalooza experience is just one of the many ways Facebook is trying to help people get the feel of an event when they’re not there,” a Facebook spokeswoman told the WSJ.

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If you’re a Snapchat user you’ll recognize the similarities between this Facebook experiment and the Our Story event streams that Snapchat launched last summer — again you can tap on entries from specific events or places to see an officially curated stream of photos and videos. Twitter is also rumored to be working on a new interface to group tweets from events.

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Facebook says its Lollapalooza live stream differs from Snapchat’s efforts because it uses content from your friends as well as official band and artist pages. If the social network behemoth gets it right, it could become a popular way of experiencing events that you can’t get to.

Even with a new record of 1.49 billion active users, Facebook executives know they can’t afford to ignore what their competitors are doing. That’s why the company is busy getting into other markets, including virtual reality, video hosting, news publishing, and Internet drones.

[Image courtesy of Lollapalooza]

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David Nield
David Nield
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Dave is a freelance journalist from Manchester in the north-west of England. He's been writing about technology since the…
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