Social networking giant Facebook announced on Friday that it is rolling out a feature that will allow users to stream live video.

The live video streaming feature on Facebook has been enabled to a select group of celebrities as well as high profile users for several months already.

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Many analysts believe that Facebook's entry into the live video streaming market is due to the unprecedented rise of live streaming via mobile phones. The success of Meerkat and Twitter-owned Periscope are prime examples of the growing popularity of the feature.

In 2014, e-commerce giant Amazon bought live streaming service Twitch, a service popular among the gaming communities.

Facebook;s live video streaming service will be rolled out to a small percentage of people living in the United States and it is currently limited only to iPhone users. On the other hand, Facebook said "over time, the company plans to bring it to all users." Despite this assurance, the company did not provide a specific timeline.

Facebook announced the new feature via a blogpost, "Live lets you show the people you care about what you're seeing in real time - whether visiting anew place, cooking your favorite recipe or just want to share some thoughts."

The new Live feature will display the number of live viewers, the name of friends who are watching as well as real-time comments that they share. The videos can be saved unto users' timeline and they have full access to keep or delete it.

According to Wired, the new Live Video feature of Facebook will have significant effect on the current live video streaming market crowded by players like Periscope, Twitch, Meerkat, YouTube and Snapchat, among others.

Facebook has the ability to integrate a feature into its platform taking a huge chunk of users away from other services. Facebook is able to do this in a massive scale considering that it has 1.5 billion users ready to devour any new feature the company is rolling out.

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