LinkedIn ends spontaneous livestreams
LinkedIn is ending spontaneous livestreaming, removing the ability to start unplanned live video and pushing creators toward scheduled, managed broadcasts instead. That changes how marketers plan real‑time engagement on the professional platform — expect more prepped, narrative-led live events. (x.com)
LinkedIn has published a migration guide saying it will consolidate the Live Events API to a single “scheduled” flow and retire the separate spontaneous-live flow used by partners and tools. (learn.microsoft.com) The scheduled flow supports a scheduledAt timestamp and LinkedIn explicitly notes developers can set scheduledAt to one minute from now to simulate an immediate “go live” action. (learn.microsoft.com) The new API path mandates additional steps and fields — for example the distribution field (feedDistribution, distributedViaFollowFeed) is required and implementations must POST /liveVideos and later PATCH the liveVideo with the registered asset. (learn.microsoft.com) Technical timing constraints remain: when using the registration flow ingestion must start within one hour of registration and streaming ingestion must begin within 120 seconds of receiving ingest URLs. (learn.microsoft.com) LinkedIn’s help-centre guidance and platform commentary set a firm enforcement window — the company and industry outlets report that, beginning June 22, 2026, all LinkedIn live events must be created via the scheduled flow (creators can still schedule “just minutes” ahead). (socialmediatoday.com) Third‑party broadcasters that route streams into LinkedIn (examples include StreamYard and Restream) already surface scheduled-event creation workflows for LinkedIn Live, and their help docs show creators must create a LinkedIn event on the platform or through the tool before ingesting the stream. (support.streamyard.com) LinkedIn has tied this shift to event performance metrics it shared earlier — the company reported a 24% quarter‑over‑quarter rise in events shared and told partners that event ads increase event viewership (Social Media Today cited LinkedIn’s 31% figure for event ad lift). (socialmediatoday.com)
