Stream Your Church Services Live on Facebook
Rick Powell

You can now extend your church services to your facebook page, via a live video stream, effectively reaching thousands of new viewers. Consider the news release below:

Facebook is now offering a new “Live Stream Box” feature which allows for Facebook Pages to offer their own live video and chat area. And Ustream will be the first to take advantage of it with Ustream on Facebook, a new service to provide live video support to select Facebook users.

This functionality is an extension of what Ustream and Facebook did with some Jonas Brothers concerts last month — events which drew huge numbers. How huge? This huge, according to Ustream:

* 1.5 million unique posts were made via Facebook Live Feed
* 23K average posts per minute
* More than 100K users joined the webcast after seeing their friend’s comment on Facebook
* 974K total unique viewers watched the one hour webcast
* Ustream reports the Jonas Brothers webcast on Facebook surpassed the largest live video event they have hosted for any music artist

So clearly, there’s a big demand for certain live events via Facebook, and Ustream is jumping on it, as Facebook’s preferred partner.

Apparently, how this will work is that on Facebook Pages there will now be a way to add a “Live” tab, which will house things such as the Ustream on Facebook feature. Previously, beyond the Jonas Brothers, Facebook has tested this with CNN and the NBA All-Star game. Here’s what Facebook has to say:

Today, Facebook is launching the Facebook Live Stream Box as a feature that any website owner or developer can use to enable Facebook users to connect, share, and post updates in real-time as they witness an event online. Websites can run the Live Stream Box next to live streaming videos of concerts, speeches, sporting events, webcasts, TV shows, presentations, or webinars. Sites can also run the Live Stream Box in multi-player games, or with any other experience where many people are visiting a website at the same time.

But Ustream’s functionality is not for everyone yet, due to what will undoubtedly be high demand, we’re told. Any artist or person, who thinks they could benefit from the Ustream functionality, can apply to have the feature turned on here. With it, you’ll get not only the live player, but a customizable banner that can link to places like iTunes or Amazon (obviously important for artists).

Right now, there are two versions of the player: A free ad-supported version, and a white-label version. The free version is the one with limited sign-ups allowed right now, so move quickly if you think you need the feature. You also get an ongoing subscription to Ustream’s white-label platform, Watershed.

This article “Stream Your Church Services Live on Facebook” by Rick Powell was excerpted from: www.churchman.org website. July 2010. It may be used for study & research purposes only.

This article may not be written by an Apostolic author, but it contains many excellent principles and concepts that can be adapted to most churches. As the old saying goes “Eat the meat. Throw away the bones.”