Facebook is undoubtedly one of the most influential companies in the tech sphere, so it was only natural that, given the opportunity, our The Charles NYC Dev Team took a trip to their New York offices for a preview of a new feature rollout — “Facebook Live: NYC.”

The release of this has been in the works for years and enables users to stream Live video content to their friends and followers instantaneously. This feature enables users to share their intimate, exciting and important moments to the world in real time.

Led by Facebook Software Engineer, Sameer Madan, and Product Engineer, Peter Knowles, the Dev Team got excellent insight into the development and maintenance of such a massively scalable live video streaming system.

“While this technology isn’t new with apps like Periscope and Meerkat leading the live streaming war, the feature integration with such a popular platform as Facebook truly transforms the way it is going to being used.” — Hannah Murray, Front End Developer

Case in point is that a live stream with high engagement can be streamed to up to hundreds of thousands of viewers. (A Q&A with Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson was our live test preview for the evening).

With high viewer rates, it’s imperative Facebook stays on top of all comments, ensuring spam is controlled and aligns with Facebook’s commenting policies. They have managed to maintain the “thundering herd” problem that is often seen with live videoing streaming. This is when at the start of a video there is a rush of viewers trying to experience the video at the same time.

We’ll be utilizing Facebook Live in the near future, so stay tuned for that.