Live streaming, a technology that has been around for years, became white hot this week after it was used to capture the aftermath of the fatal shooting of a black man by a white police officer in Minnesota.

Diamond Reynolds opened her Facebook Live app and live-streamed what happened after the shooting that left her boyfriend Philando Castile dead and a country in turmoil.

“Live streaming is quite different … than what we’ve seen before,” said Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group. “Skype and Facetime are most often used as one-to-one communication vehicles. But live-casting is different in that it gives users a one-to-many live broadcasting capability — something that had only been available to broadcasting companies up until now.”

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