Facebook paying media companies to use Facebook Live

At a Facebook Live launch event in Hollywood yesterday, Will Cathcart, Facebook's vice president of product, told Reuters that the company had a number of partners to create video content in order to kick start its video sharing service Live.

He added he expected media companies to make money from advertising and offering other services on Live over the longer term.

Time had been paid to use Facebook Live, according to a source with knowledge of the partnership who spoke to Reuters. According to another source who spoke to Reuters, Vox Media Inc's eight brands, including Vox and Re/code, had also been paid by Facebook.

According to Re/code tech news site The New York Times, BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post were also paid by the social media network.

Thomson Reuters and Conde Nast Entertainment too would work with Facebook Live, according to spokespeople.

Facebook had expanded its live video product, Facebook Live, and had given it prominent placement on its app. Facebook was also rolling out features to make it easier for users to search and comment in real time.

The move posed the biggest challenge to online rivals, including Twitter's Periscope live-streaming service, Snapchat's video features and Alphabet's YouTube, as also a potential threat to broadcast television.

Facebook Live was launched as a way of sharing a moment ''live'' with everyone on Facebook. According to commentators it was a compelling platform. Mark Zuckerberg had himself pointed out, that it was a great way to share a moment as it happened, especially with 360 degree video and maybe even 3D.

Though Live video was currently limited to the US and Facebook Mentions (restricted to certain verified accounts), Zuckerberg was very bullish on the service and hoped to roll it out worldwide very soon.

''We're working with a few partners, and in some of the cases that includes a financial incentive,'' Fidji Simo, the product director in charge of Facebook's Live video push, told Re/code.

Earlier, when Facebook had wanted to launch new services, it got test partners to work with it, but there was an incentive with Facebook Live in that chances were very good that more people would see the stuff put out on it.

What it meant was Facebook's News Feed algorithm would prioritise live video while the broadcast was ongoing, making it appear higher in people's feeds. It was also promoting it including sending out push notifications when videos were live, and alerting people when they had missed a live video.

All of this could work out to drive more viewers to videos and though at the moment there was no way to directly benefit from the eyeball as Facebook Live  had no ads, the social network expected that to change.

In the meantime, it was willing to pay just to make that happen.