Doing it live: Qik’s streaming mobile video service connects with Facebook

Video-sharing hasn’t been a major part of Facebook — until the site’s March redesign stuck a button on the “publisher” message box on everyone’s homepage and made the feature much more obvious.

Since then, the company has been getting nearly half a million video uploads a day, and nearly 40 percent have been web cams. Which means live-streaming mobile video company Qik‘s integration with Facebook Connect looks well-timed.

You can now create and upload Qik videos directly to Facebook without having to install any sort of application on the social networking site — and you can watch these videos on Qik’s mobile applications or its mobile web site or within Facebook or Facebook’s mobile applications. Once you’re done filming a video on Qik, it saves a copy on its own site and uploads another one to Facebook.

You can use it by logging into Qik then clicking through its Facebook Connect credentials, or by signing up with Qik using Facebook Connect. Among other components of the integration, you can also use Qik to update your status with a link to your live-stream on Qik. When you stream live, Qik will also use Connect to post a link to your video on your wall and insert an item for your friends to see in their news feeds.

For now, those who use non-touch smartphones with Windows Mobile (definitely not me, by the way) can choose which videos to share on Facebook from their Qik accounts. For other phones, all of a user’s public videos will be sent to their Facebook account — although the company says it’s planning more sharing options for all phones.

Qik’s mobile application works on some 118 phone models, including the iPhone (although not officially), and integration with Facebook Connect has been requested by users for a long time, Qik co-founder Bhaskar Roy tells me. The company claims to be the first to deeply integrate Facebook Connect’s video application programming interfaces with mobile applications.