Meta’s “Broadcast Channels,” previously available on Instagram and WhatsApp, will be available on Facebook and Messenger “in the coming weeks,” according to a Meta blog post. CEO Mark Zuckerberg also shared the news in a post from his personal Facebook account.
Broadcast channels work a bit like huge but limited group chats. A creator can invite their followers and then share things like voice notes, polls, text posts, videos, and photos to everyone who joins. Channel members receive notifications when the creator publishes content.
These channels will be available specifically for pages on Facebook and are currently in the testing phase. For example, anyone who manages the official page of a celebrity or company can start a channel directly from the page. Anyone who wants to join a broadcast channel can do so directly from a specific page.
Broadcast channels have come in handy on Instagram, where they have been present since February this year. I am a member of a few myself. While they may have hundreds of members, their chat-like interface (and the fact that they live in your DMs) makes it feel like a more intimate way to connect with the creators you follow.
On the other hand, I also try to limit the number of broadcast channels I join, mainly because I want to keep control of how many notifications I receive throughout the day, which is why it doesn’t add up to a whole. I understand very well why these channels don’t can be cross-platform. Many other tools offer the ability to work on both Facebook and Instagram, such as direct messaging. I don’t see much benefit in joining both an Instagram and Facebook channel for the same creator if it results in more notifications about the same content.
Still, providing broadcast channels for Facebook and Messenger seems like an obvious next step in the feature’s (very fast) path. After its launch in the US earlier this year, the feature has exploded on Instagram, with the most popular channels counting millions of members.
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2023-10-18 21:26:17
#Metas #broadcast #channels #Facebook #Messenger
