In this article
The story camera has a live mode. Switch to it, choose who can watch the way you would for any story, and you are broadcasting — with comments arriving on screen and the option for people to send Stars while you talk.
The interesting part is where it lives. A live story sits in the stories ring, which means the audience assembles itself.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Start a live story and set who can watch.
- check_circle Tell it apart from opening a voice chat.
- check_circle Handle comments while you are the only person running it.
- check_circle Keep the money from changing what you broadcast.
Live is a mode on the camera you already use, not a separate thing you have to set up.
sensors The audience is whoever happens to be looking
Nobody is summoned to a live story. It appears where your stories appear, and the people who see it are the people who opened the app in the window while it was running. That is a genuinely different shape of audience from anything else in the app.
Which makes it excellent for something that is happening and poor for something that is planned. A view worth showing, a queue you are standing in, a thing being built, the moment after a result — all of those work because the value is that it is happening now and there is no other way to see it.
A session announced for eight o'clock does not work here, because attendance is accidental by design. If people need to be there on purpose, they need something they can be invited to.
Starting a live stream, or opening a room
Both put you in front of people in real time. They are not interchangeable.
amp_stories A live story
headphones A voice chat in a group
Ask whether people need to see it or to talk in it. That answers which one you are opening.
chat You are the presenter and the moderator
Comments arrive while you are talking, and unlike a hosted session there is nobody else to watch them. Reading and speaking at the same time is a skill nobody has, so the decision worth making before you start is which of the two you are doing.
The workable pattern is deliberate ignoring: talk for a few minutes, stop, read, respond to two or three, carry on. It looks less responsive than glancing constantly and it is far better to watch, because the alternative is a broadcast where every sentence trails off.
The other thing to decide in advance is what you will do about the awkward comment, because there will be one. Having settled beforehand that you will simply carry on is what stops it derailing the next ten minutes.
toll When people can send money mid-sentence
Stars arriving during a broadcast are a real form of support and they also introduce an incentive that does not exist anywhere else in the app: you can see, in the moment, which things you say produce money. Everybody who has broadcast for long enough starts doing more of whatever that was.
It is worth naming because it works slowly. The defence is a decision made in advance about what the broadcast is for, and a habit of thanking people once by name rather than every time something arrives — which is both better manners and a way of keeping the broadcast about its subject.
settings Starting the stream
- Open the story camera and switch to live Same camera, different mode.
- Set who can watch A small list is a different broadcast.
- Look at what is behind you Live cannot be edited.
- Decide when you will read comments Rather than constantly.
- Use it for what is happening Not for something announced.
- Thank people once, by name And keep going.
This page is the unannounced kind of broadcast. The curriculum step is the other kind: a room people are invited into, how speakers are managed, and what it takes to hold a session that was planned.
At a glance
- 1Live story
Start a live broadcast from stories.
- 2Viewers gather
Your story ring shows it without any invitation.
- 3One person show
Decide when you will read comments.
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