Facebook Live fell apart just as Buzzfeed was about to interview Barack Obama

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Facebook, and Facebook-following publishers, are really strangely invested in live video now.

But that doesn’t mean that Zuckerberg and co. have perfected Live as a product yet.

A few hours ago Buzzfeed was set to stream a live interview with Barack Obama over the service, but things didn’t exactly go to plan. The stream cut out before the interview had even started.

Whether it was a connection issue or not, we don’t really know. What we do know is that Buzzfeed was able to launch a reliable YouTube stream in favour of the Facebook Live feed. They pasted it in the comments.

Later in the day Buzzfeed eventually were able to restream the interview to Facebook, with a deceptive ‘Live’ tag. As the Wall Street Journal reported last week:

Facebook Live doesn’t necessarily have to be live after all.

Despite its name, the social network’s new video tool is allowing media companies and video creators to stream pre-recorded content, leading some to wonder if they should “broadcast” every video through the feature.

Sound familiar? It’s a model that has worked for decades for TV networks, which typically air previously-taped shows on a “linear” schedule.

Nobody ever said live video was easy, but Facebook still buckled badly under the pressure.