• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, December 22, 2016

From celebrities to athletes to politicians, Facebook is trying to encourage more public figures to share live video. 

To do so, the social giant is adding several features to Live Updates for its Mentions service.

Firstly, a new “team prompts” feature will let a personality’s “people” -- i.e., assistants, press reps, and other support staff -- create drafts of Facebook Live post descriptions.

This should make it easier for public figures to review and post via Mentions before going live.

Their teams can also schedule reminders to go live, or publish posts from the Mentions app at a specific time.

Before going live, a new comment moderation tool will let personalities and their teams add words and phrases to a “blacklist,” which will prevent comments containing those words from appearing during their broadcast.

Additionally, an “adjustments tray” gives people using Mentions more control and customization over how their broadcast appears to viewers.

Now, broadcasters can flip the camera horizontally or vertically, adjust brightness settings, and choose whether to mirror the picture or not.

A mirroring setting should also prove useful when broadcasters want to showcase certain text or a sponsor logo during a branded content broadcast.

Facebook is also testing a broadcaster status bar with a small group of people using Mentions. The status bar provides information about audio level, connectivity, and battery status while the broadcaster is live.

Finally, a new trimming tool lets people trim excess footage from the beginning and end of their live video after the broadcast has ended.