Ustream Integrates With Facebook Timeline For Sharing Live Videos With Friends

Live video streaming website Ustream today is launching an integration with Facebook’s new Timeline user interface. This means that users will be able to share the live videos they’re watching on Ustream with their Facebook friends in real-time.

The Ustream launch is one of the first video app integrations with Timeline. Thus far, Facebook’s Timeline has been populated with other types of media: Journalism publications such as Yahoo News and the Washington Post, music through services such as Spotify, and social and lifestyle apps such as Foodspotting and Pose.

Of course, just like the articles you read and the songs you listen to, your tastes in video viewing are very personal — and not always something you’re willing to share with your entire social network of friends and acquaintances. Ustream says it has been very careful to implement strong privacy controls with the Timeline integration to make it completely clear to users what they’re sharing and when. “We have definitely made an effort to increase privacy controls, and make it very transparent to users what is being shared and what is not,” Ustream product manager Brian Mayer said in an interview this week.

For now, though, you still can’t watch Ustream videos at the same time as your friends within either Facebook or Ustream connected to Facebook (similar to how Google+ Hangouts lets you watch YouTube videos with friends at the same time and talk about it, but without the webcam aspect.) That capability is being worked on by the people at Ustream, I’m told, and should make its debut sometime in the weeks ahead: “Features that we are working on currently will let you see what your friends are watching and communicate with your friends live via our Social Stream,” a Ustream rep says.