Facebook takes on streaming apps like Periscope and Meerkat with its new 'live video' feature (FB)

A few months after launching a video streaming feature for celebrities, Facebook is now starting to let regular users to broadcast footage of themselves live to their friends. 

The new feature essentially mirrors the experience offered by Twitter-owned Periscope and the startup Meerkat: Facebook users can write a little description and then launch a broadcast where they can read comments from viewers and see how many people are watching at once.

Facebook also makes it easy for users to save their videos to their timelines.

Users can access the feature from the main Facebook app, by tapping on the status update button and selecting a special icon. For now, it's only available to small percentage of iPhone users, as Facebook tests the feature for broader roll-out.

Live videos align with Facebook's efforts to makes its content more time sensitive, so that people have incentive to check their feeds at specific times instead of just when they're bored. In that vein, Facebook released remotely-accessible "Place Tips" earlier this year to encourage users check out live, curated content from events. 

Here's how Live Video looks:

 

Facebook is also launching a new "collage" feature that lets users create albums of photos and videos with less effort. It will automatically suggest content from users' camera rolls based on when and where they took each shot:

SEE ALSO: The fabulous life of new father Mark Zuckerberg

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