• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, December 3, 2015

Putting Twitter’s Periscope and similar services on notice, Facebook is getting serious about live-video streaming.

The social giant is now inviting a “small percentage” of its roughly 1.5 billion users to try the feature, it said on Thursday.

Those users that have access to the feature simply need to tap on Update Status and then select the Live Video icon. They can then write a quick description and choose the audience that they want to share with before going live.

While broadcasting, users will see the number of live viewers, the names of friends who are tuning in, and a real-time stream of comments.

When users end their broadcast, it will be saved on their Timeline like any other video, which they can then delete or keep for friends to watch later.

To encourage viewing, Facebook plans to feature users’ live streams right in the News Feeds of their friends and followers.

Once peripheral to Facebook, mobile and video are now key to the company’s fortunes.

“In the coming quarters, we expect Instagram and video ads monetization to keep increasing Facebook's share of the display ad market," eMarketer analyst Martín Utreras explained in a recent report.