One of the architects of Facebook Inc.'s live-streaming video product is striking out on his own.

Vadim Lavrusik, the former product manager of Facebook Live, has co-founded Alively, an app meant for users who want to share live videos with a handful of people rather than their entire social network. It launched in the U.S. on Apple mobile devices Tuesday.

Alively joins dozens of other companies trying to crack the next big thing in social media: live-streaming. They include Twitter Inc.'s Periscope, which came out in early 2015, and the similarly named Live.ly, launched in June and owned by Shanghai-based company Musical.ly Inc. The largest player is Facebook, which earlier this year gave its 1.7 billion monthly users access to a live-streaming feature called Facebook Live.

But Mr. Lavrusik and the company's two other co-founders, Ray Lee and Vincent Tuscano, think social-media users don't want to share their videos with a huge group of people. "These are moments you would have recorded on your camcorder, but those aren't moments you'd want to broadcast on CNN," said Mr. Lavrusik, who left Facebook earlier this year to start the company.

Facebook users can choose to limit their live-stream videos to a select group of people in their news feed, but most users use it to reach broad audiences.

Companies in Silicon Valley and beyond are betting that live video will redefine how people communicate and absorb information, much in the way messaging apps have over the last five years. Through live videos, users watch events unfold in real time, theoretically making them more compelling than prerecorded videos.

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg vaulted live video to the top of the company's agenda in February after internal data revealed the format's popularity among younger users. It is now a key part of Mr. Zuckerberg's effort to transform the social network into a "video-first" platform.

Mr. Lavrusik helped shape Facebook's live-video strategy, starting last year when he led the introduction of the feature to Facebook's app for public figures, Mentions. Facebook didn't respond to a request for comment.

Alively is positioning itself as a "one-to-few" live-streaming platform, where users can share moments they don't care to reveal to a broader audience, says Mr. Lavrusik, now president and chief product officer of Alively.

Broadcasting to a select group, such as friends or family, can protect users from the harsh judgment that a wider audience might bring, Alively says.

Tight competition within live-streaming is just one of the challenges facing Alively. Another is the fact that fewer and fewer users are downloading new apps. Live-streaming also represents a big technical challenge.

Alively videos are stored in the cloud, rather than on users' phones. Alively said the app prioritizes picture quality, rather than immediacy. There is a 10- to 30-second delay in the broadcast to make sure the image is clear when it is transmitted to other users, the company added.

The San Mateo, Calif.-based startup has raised $800,000 in a seed round from venture-capital firms including Greylock Partners and SV Angel.

Write to Deepa Seetharaman at Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 23, 2016 13:45 ET (17:45 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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