Tumblr snags live video

If you haven’t heard about this whole live video phenomenon, then I’m not really sure what you’re doing with your life. Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon are all massive platforms that have recently taken up technological arms to bring live streaming video to their users, and now Tumblr is joining their ranks. What makes this a bit more fascinating, however, is just how… unusual Tumblr’s culture is, which means we’re probably about to get some very delightfully weird live video from the site. In Tumblr’s own words announcing the feature: “This should be interesting.”

How’s it work? No worries; we’ve got your back. Here’s the breakdown from the announcement.

Crucial details and compelling miscellany:

• You can post live videos through YouNow (iOS, Android), Kanvas (iOS, Android), Upclose(iOS, Android) and YouTube (Android-ready right now, iOS-ready in a few days). How? Here’s how.
• They can be reblogged like any other post. Which is wild.  
• They stick around after you shoot them, and can thus be enjoyed in the future as well as the present.
• We’ll notify you when anyone you follow goes live. And we’ll pin their video to the top of your dashboard. Wouldn’t want you to miss anything, after all.

So it looks like the spry social media platform is taking a slightly different approach than their competitors. They’re not hosting the live video themselves, but the behavior of live video posting will be essentially the same as that of Facebook. Once you’ve completed shooting a live video stream, then it will post to your Tumblr blog just like a normal video post, which means users will be able to review it, like it, or reblog it.

This capability isn’t quite live at the time of writing, but the company is hosting an event that counts down to the launch moment with a variety of live feeds that you can check out at livevideo.tumblr.com. While we wait, what do you think of Tumblr’s live video support? Let us know in the comments below!