Facebook: Venue App Determined to Make Live TV Events More Interactive

Facebook’s Venue is a new app designed to make the live events more social. Facebook’s R&D group, the New Product Experimentation (NPE) team, has developed the digital companion app. Its first live event is the NASCAR race this Sunday. 

Venue appears to be an attempt by Facebook to overtake the role of Twitter as the country’s official way to chat with others while watching an event live, notes TechCrunch. While Twitter allows any of its users to join a conversation, usually by tweeting with the use of a hashtag, Venue is much more curated. 

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Commentary will come mostly from select expert commentators such as journalists or athletes, while public participation will be concentrated around specific moments in conversations or polls. 

In an apparent attempt to make it easier for viewers to focus on one screen at a time, notifications will be received via the app when there is a new digital event with which they can interact. Facebook calls these “moments” and says that they will occur whenever the Venue host thinks that something particularly memorable or interesting is happening during the event.

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Nascarcasm will host Sunday’s NASCAR race, and will be hosted by numerous celebrities including NASCAR driver Landon Cassill and Fox Sports reporter Alan Cavanna. They will provide comments on future NASCAR races. 

This is the third new app that Facebook’s NPE team has released this week. The R&D group launched Collab on Wednesday, a TikTok-inspired app designed to help collaborate with the music. There is also Catchup, a voice calling app designed for group calls to be coordinated. 

Venue is now available on both iOS and Android.