Facebook recently announced a handful of new video tools and updates, focused on live streaming, Facebook’s Watch Party and Creator Studio, as well as an option to schedule content on Instagram and IGTV. Continue reading for the full details.

The first updates announced were several new features to Facebook Pages involving live streaming. Owners of Pages can now use a “rehearsal” feature to live stream only to other Page admins and editors. This new feature comes highly requested from publishers, who've asked for this to help them test new ideas and setups with live streaming before actually going live to their followers. Page owners will also be able to trim the beginning or end of a live stream video, and can now go live for as long as 8 hours. The final update to live streaming is the ability for publishers to use apps that let them stream to more than one streaming service at once, by simulcasting via the Live API.

Facebook also announced several updates to their Watch Party feature. These updates include the ability to schedule a party in advance to help with promotion, the ability to “replay” a Watch Party if the viewer missed it the first time, and the ability to tag business partners in branded content. There are also two new analytic metrics being added to Creator Studio, which include Minutes Viewed and Unique 60s Viewers (total number of unique users that watched at least 60 seconds in a Watch Party). 

Creator Studio has also received an update to its interface. The dashboard now has a visualization layer in Loyalty Insights, which display the videos that the most loyal fans want to see by measuring which videos have the most return viewers. There is also a new Distribution metric that scores each video’s performance based on the Page’s historic average on a range of metrics, including: 1 Minute Views, Average Minutes Watched and Retention. 

The final announcement is the ability for creators to schedule their Instagram Feed and IGTV content for up to six months. The company also announced the ability to draft and edit in Instagram and IGTV, which will be coming in the next few months. We'll keep you posted as more details emerge on upcoming developments, and as always, feel free to reach out to us with any questions on any of these updates.