LinkedIn<\/a> \u2014 the social network for the working world with close to 600 million users globally \u2014 says that video is the fastest-growing format on its platform alongside original written work, shared news and other content. Now it\u2019s taking its next step in the medium in earnest.<\/p>\n This week, the company is launching live video, giving people and organizations the ability to broadcast real-time video to select groups, or to the LinkedIn <\/a> world at large.<\/p>\n Launching in beta first in the U.S., LinkedIn Live (as the product is called) will be invite-only. In coming weeks, LinkedIn will also post a contact form for others who want to get in on the action. It\u2019s not clear when and if LinkedIn will make it possible for everyone to create LinkedIn Live videos, but if you consider how it developed its publishing features for written work<\/a>, that will come later, too.<\/p>\n Initial live content that LinkedIn hopes to broadcast lines up with the kind of subject matter you might already see in LinkedIn\u2019s news feed: the plan is to cover conferences, product announcements, Q&As and other events led by influencers and mentors, office hours from a big tech company, earnings calls, graduation and awards ceremonies and more.<\/p>\n And to underscore how LinkedIn is keen to develop this \u2014 especially in its first phase \u2014 not as rough-and-ready user-generated content, but as streams of the kinds of videos that fit with its wider ethos, it has selected several third-party developers of live broadcasting streaming services that creators will work with to create and post more polished live video on LinkedIn.<\/p>\n These include Wirecast, Switcher Studio, Wowza Media Systems, Socialive and Brandlive, \u201cwith more to come in the following weeks,\u201d LinkedIn said.<\/p>\n There is another technical partner for LinkedIn\u2019s live video effort, too: Microsoft, whose Azure Media Services, part of its cloud division, is providing encoding. Although Microsoft acquired LinkedIn in 2016, it has mostly kept a distance in terms of knitting together product development between the two, so this is a notable exception. Skype, incidentally, is not part of this video effort.<\/p>\n Compared to its competitors in the social networking sphere, LinkedIn has been a late bloomer when it comes to video.<\/p>\nBetter late than never?<\/h2>\n