Called Watch, Facebook’s new video hub will be available in its mobile apps, on its desktop site and through its connected-TV apps, but for now only “to a limited group of people in the U.S.,” according to a company blog post published after Business Insider and Mashable reported that Facebook would unveil Watch on Thursday. While people already watch a lot of videos on Facebook, they likely don’t think of Facebook as a place to watch video. It just so happens that their Facebook feeds are full of videos (and it just so happens that more videos means more video ads, which means more money for Facebook). Video can’t completely overtake people’s news feeds because: Not everyone that a person is friends with on Facebook posts videos, and if people feel like Facebook is no longer a place to keep up with their friends and family, they might look for another social network to fill that gap. Advertisers may be more comfortable buying Facebook’s mid-roll ads when they’re running in the middle of a TV-style show than a closed-circuit video of a judge trying to understand why the defendant has no pants. So Facebook created Watch — which you can think of as Facebook’s YouTube in the same way that Instagram is its Snapchat — and which is split into two main tabs: Discover and Watchlist. The Discover tab — which is definitely not named after Snapchat’s home for traditional media content — is the main feed for people to browse among the live and pre-recorded shows that creators and media companies are producing for Facebook, such as Major League Baseball’s weekly game broadcast, Tastemade’s cooking show “Kitchen Little” and vlog-style series “Nas Daily.” People will be able to comment on, react to and join Groups around these shows in the same way they do for Facebook Live broadcasts, and viewers will be able to see those comments and reactions while watching a show. In addition to Facebook hand-picking shows to highlight, the Discover tab will also categorize shows within sections according to what people are watching across its social network and how people are reacting to those shows. Attend the largest search marketing conference on the East Coast: SMX East this October in NYC. You'll get useful, proven tactics in SEO, SEM, conversion optimization, social media, mobile and more.
Facebook is ready to premiere its attempt to take on YouTube.
announced on Wednesday that it will begin rolling out a revamped version of its existing home for videos that caters to the original, episodic shows Facebook has been licensing to make people think of it as a digital video service on par with YouTube, Netflix and Hulu.
Called Watch, Facebook’s new video hub will be available in its mobile apps, on its desktop site and through its connected-TV apps, but for now only “to a limited group of people in the U.S.,” according to a company blog post published after Business Insider and Mashable reported that Facebook would unveil Watch on Thursday.
While people already watch a lot of videos on Facebook, they likely don’t think of Facebook as a place to watch video. It just so happens that their Facebook feeds are full of videos (and it just so happens that more videos means more video ads, which means more money for Facebook). Facebook does want people to think of Facebook as a place to also watch video — but the word “also” is key.
Not everyone that a person is friends with on Facebook posts videos, and if people feel like Facebook is no longer a place to keep up with their friends and family, they might look for another social network to fill that gap.