Live Chat With Friends brings private chats to Facebook Live

Facebook understands the importance of video on its platform, particularly live video. Facebook Live has proved to be an incredibly popular component of the social network and now the company is introducing new ways to connect with friends through the service.

Known as Live Chat With Friends, the new feature makes it possible to chat privately with friends during live broadcasts. The company is also rolling out another new feature called Live With. This "lets you invite a friend into your live video so you can hang out together, even if you’re not in the same place."

Live Chat With Friends seems like a very natural expansion to Facebook Live. While it can be useful to be able to interact with an entire audience of Facebook users watching the same live stream, there are times when it makes more sense to limit a conversation to a group of friends -- and this is exactly what Facebook is enabling.

Facebook says that the feature is being tested on mobile platforms in multiple countries at the moment, and will enjoy a wider rollout in the summer.

Live Chat With Friends lets you invite friends to a private chat about a public live broadcast. You can invite friends who are already watching or other friends who you think may want to tune in. You’re able to jump back into the public conversation at any time, and you can still continue chatting with your friends via Messenger after the broadcast ends.

With Live Chat With Friends, you can be part of big moments with the wider community but also have the option to participate in personal conversations with the people closest to you, directly within the Live experience.

The Live With feature works much like the celebrity-only feature that was available last year. Now Facebook is allowing anyone with a profile or page -- providing they are an iOS user -- to invite friends into their live videos, picture-in-picture style. Facebook explains:

Live With lets you invite a friend into your live video so you can hang out together, even if you're not in the same place. Sharing the screen with a friend can make going live more fun and interactive -- for both you and your viewers.

To invite a friend to join you in your live video, simply select a guest from the Live Viewers section, or tap a comment from the viewer you want to invite. Your viewer can then choose whether or not to join your broadcast. You can go live with a guest in both portrait mode (for a picture-in-picture experience) and landscape mode (for a side-by-side experience).