Facebook introduced a video live-streaming service during the summer, but limited it to its Mentions app, which provides celebrities and public figures with a specialised way to interact with their followers. Now, the social network is beginning testing the feature for non-famous folks.

The Live Video feature is being rolled out to a small percentage of people in the US on iPhones to begin with, and only as a test at the moment, but given the popularity of live-streaming apps like Periscope and Meerkat, it seems inevitable that Facebook will attempt to bring the functionality to a wide audience as soon as possible.

Users with the Live Video feature will be able to launch a broadcast from their status update bar, and will be able to monitor the number of viewers and any comments they make in real time. Once the broadcast is over, it will be automatically posted to their Timeline and can be rewatched by others.

Facebook users who want to watch live-streaming videos will be able to find them in their News Feed, and can subscribe to individual users so that they receive a notification the next time a broadcaster goes live.

Facebook is also rolling out two other new features; a new method of mobile sharing and a tool to create collages of photos and videos. The collage tool knits together content from a smartphones camera into a scrolling, moving collage, based on when and where the photos and footage was taken. The feature aims to create a more engaging form of gallery for notable events like holidays, concerts or day trips. It will be available on iPhone from today, and on Android early next year.

The new mobile sharing method is based around the changes Facebook has had to implement to bring Live Video to a wider audience. The pilot scheme currently running will enable a few people on iPhone and Android to tap their status bar to see a drop down menu of all the different options available for how to share something.