• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, August 6, 2015

Meerkat and Periscope are getting some competition -- sort of. Facebook is getting into the mobile live-streaming video game with a new service, “Live,” that enables celebrities and other figures of note to broadcast live digital of themselves to their fans via Facebook’s Mentions app.

Similar to Twitter’s Periscope notifications, Live broadcasts are posted to their followers’ News Feeds, and frequent visitors to the celeb’s page will also get alerts via push notifications. Fans can post comments that appear in real time, and the videos are later archived for repeat viewing.  That’s another point of differentiation from Meerkat and Periscope, which don’t make recordings of live streams available permanently.

As noted, the Live service is limited to famous folks and is not available to mere peons; users have to have a verified Facebook account to gain access. It kicked off with live streams from big names like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who showed fans his workout as he gets in shape for the upcoming Baywatch movie, and Stephen Amell, star of the CW’s “Arrow,” driving around Vancouver.

Facebook has rolled out an array of new video products and capabilities as it seeks to position itself as a rival to YouTube and fend off Twitter’s video push. Last month Facebook revamped the interface for videos displayed in its newsfeed, allowing users to float videos from the newsfeed so they can continue watching them while scrolling through other content. The new feature could boost engagement with video content as well as the auto-play video ads that appear in the newsfeed. It also began testing a new ad offering that inserts in-line ads between clips in Facebook’s suggested videos feature, enabling Facebook users to tap on a link from their Newsfeed to access the relevant video ads.

Facebook also brought animated gifs to Messenger, allowing users to directly employ gifs without having to import them from third party platforms.

Previous reports state that the number of video views on Facebook increased from one billion per day in the third quarter of 2014 to four billion per day in the first quarter of 2015, with 75% of this viewing taking place on mobile.