Facebook Mentions App Opens to Verified Profiles

The Mentions feed could also be a helpful newsgathering tool.

Using the Mentions app, if you try to upload a status update, you will now get the option to share your content only with your followers, if your profile has been verified. Another fantastic feature is the ability to livestream broadcasts, a service released last month under Mentions dubbed as “Live”. On Thursday, however, it’s opening up a bit more, to “public figures with verified profiles”, including journalists who’ve gone through Facebook’s verification process. Using the app, they can monitor Facebook chatter about various topics and hold question-and-answer sessions from their phones. While streams on Meerkat evaporate instantaneously and the ones of Periscope expire after 24 hours, Live allows users to save the streams and share them with their followers for future references.

Still, journalists might want to give the Mentions app a try. With its almost 1.5 billion monthly users, Facebook may be in the unique position to bring livestreaming into the mainstream-at least when it comes to people willing to watch.

“The great thing is that we’ve already seen those verified profiles using Facebook very actively, said Vadim Lavrusik, product manager for Facebook Mentions and Live”. I’m not alone in this: Journalists love Twitter.

Regular Facebook users and marketers are still being shut out.

The response from a spokesperson: “Right now, we’re focused on iterating on the product”. Its similarities to Twitter aside, Facebook is pitching the service as an outlet for public figures to engage with fans in a simple and direct way on mobile via the Mentions app.

Facebook wants more journalists to use its platform as their distribution channel of choice. That development was greeted by various members of the journalism community as either an opportunity to join forces with a tech juggernaut or as an omen that the Facebook was chipping away at their independence, depending on who was writing.

Making Mentions and live streaming available to public figures and journalists opens it up to a slightly wider audience, but still leaves out a lot of people who would like to stream live on Facebook. The app will allow journalists to post live to Facebook during breaking news, for behind-the-scenes reports, or to host live Q&As with followers, among other possibilities.