An upload of fun

Many apps allow users to post completed videos to Facebook, but LiveLens streams the action in real time

By PATRICIA CARMEL
LiveLens has tens of thousands of users521 (photo credit: Courtesy)
LiveLens has tens of thousands of users521
(photo credit: Courtesy)
‘Imagine you’re eating dinner with the kids, and your baby daughter is smearing spaghetti and tomato sauce all over her face.
Wouldn’t you want to share that with her grandparents in Florida at the same time as it’s happening?” asks Raviv Kula, vice president of marketing at LiveLens.
With LiveLens, a new smart phone app, you can do just that. LiveLens lets you stream live video to your Facebook friends’ time line while you are recording it.
“There are a few apps you can use to upload video to social networks,” says Kula, “but LiveLens is the only app that allows you to do so with one click in real-time.”
LiveLens is the brainchild of LiveLens CEO Max Bluvband. He had noticed that people post numerous personal photos to Facebook but upload videos mainly from external sources, such as YouTube. Very few people had posted personal videos because, until now, doing so involved a series of clicks and too much time.
LiveLens, on the other hand, can be uploaded to Facebook with a single click while recording is in progress.
Designed with the non-technical user in mind, the app allows users to easily distribute videos among family members and friends, and there is no limitation on the length of the video.
“Through my phone, I can see which friends are online on Facebook right now, and I can select one or more friends to stream my video to,” Kula explains. “While I record, I see a message saying ‘Live on Facebook.’ The delay between recording and viewing the video is so minimal that friends can view the action almost while it is happening. If they have LiveLens installed on their mobile device, they receive an invitation to watch the video. As most people have their phones with them all day, they will get instant notification that my video is streaming to them. Friends can then like and comment on the video while they watch. Likes and comments are displayed instantly on my phone, so I can interact with my friends while I’m recording.”
If selected friends are not online while the video is streaming to their Facebook page, they will be able to view it later, whenever they log on to Facebook, either from their mobile device or from the computer. From their Facebook page, friends can now share the video with other friends.
“This app makes it possible to involve people who are far away in the minutiae that go into a typical family day, like when the kids wake up in the morning or while they’re getting ready to go to school,” he says.
To emphasize the point, Kula relates how he recorded the Manhattan skyline from a plane taking off from La Guardia a few weeks ago in what must have been an impressive perspective.
“I’d wanted to record this view for years and in the end, after posting it to Facebook, it got about 30 views. As opposed to that, a video of me eating breakfast with my parents got over 90 views. That’s because people living far away love to share in the intimate details of family life. This is what this application is all about,” he says.
Raviv, Bluvband and Shahar Hajdu, LiveLens’s chief technology officer, formed the company late in 2012. There are currently 10 employees involved in the development of the app.
“We’re continuously fine-tuning the app and adding more options, particularly in the area of increased interaction capabilities. This is a unique aspect of the app. The development of the app was a complicated process,” says Kula. “For example, we had to take into account overloaded networks and what to do if the connection to the network breaks during recording. One major breakthrough was finding a way that allows the user to continue recording in the event of a disconnection from the network and to upload the remainder of the video the moment the connection is reestablished.”
The company provides on-the-spot assistance. For example, a user might be recording and streaming his video to Facebook but, for some reason, the video is not being uploaded. The user has the option of sending an email directly to support personnel, who will communicate with the user, check his settings and help him through the process. In this way, technical problems can also be identified and quickly corrected.
LiveLens has a following among celebrities, such as Guy Pines, and rock stars and groups, such as the Idan Raichel Project, Hadag Nahash and Giraffot, who stream video of their performances to their Facebook fan pages. Fans can follow their favorites online in Facebook, substantially increasing the celebs’ exposure and increasing their fan base.
LiveLens currently has tens of thousands of users: 85 percent are from the US, 8% from Israel and the remainder from such disparate locations as Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Pakistan, the Philippines, Brazil, Italy, Turkey, Germany, the UK, Spain, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. Perhaps surprisingly, more men – 65% of the user base – use LiveLens than women.
Future plans include integration with the other social networks, such as the Russian version of Facebook and with Google+.
“We don’t plan to charge for LiveLens,” says Kula. “Once we’ve reached over a million downloads, however, we intend to leverage commercial pages. But for the regular user, it will continue to be free.”