By now you’ve seen our Facebook Live coverage of auto shows, car launch events, and a even a little taste of a regular everyday on-road adventure. (If not, you can re-watch the broadcasts.) Do you like where this is going?
http://jalopnik.com/the-nissan-new…
Pretty much everyone seems to agree that the future of the internet lies in video, and live video—particularly on Facebook’s platform—is the next big thing. We may well be looking at a watershed moment in live internet vids being a much bigger part of the digital landscape.
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We did a lot of live casting from the 2016 New York International Auto Show, and other news outlets did too. I tried livestreaming the most interesting parts of the Tesla Model 3 launch party, as did Road & Track’s Bob Sorokanich and Alex Roy from The Drive.
Those were all fairly traditional “news-style” broadcasts, although we did them in our style. You would have been just as likely to see outlets you’re already familiar with, like CNN or Fox, covering events in a similar way, just on broadcast TV.
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This week we tried something different. I took a cool car on a drive in a beautiful place while thousands of people came along via Facebook Live video.
In case you didn’t get to join us as it happened, you can still see the videos here because the internet is forever. You just have to keep your standards calibrated for a “live performance” shot on a smartphone.
Unfortunately the famous California canyon roads all have terrible cell signal, so our ride was cut into two clips.
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Videographer Mark Arnold held the phone and read live comments that were coming in for me to answer. At least, the reasonably polite ones.
So we already have some feedback about how this enterprise went. And of course, the view count quantifies the results of our efforts. But now that you may have had time to digest the idea of live car videos outside the realm of covering specific events, I’d love to hear your thoughts and constructive criticism.
What elements did you like, what annoyed you? Did you actually feel like you were with us? That was my primary objective. What would you like more of in live car videos?
I have a feeling the most common answer to that last question is going to be “more extreme driving and more talented drivers.” Fair enough, though at the end of the day the harder thing to access is really a place where people will be comfortable driving aggressively on camera.
But I’m eager to hear everything else you have to say about it. We’re going to be doing a lot more of these, so we welcome your input.
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