Facebook Launches Official Dedicated Video Service

Has Mark Zuckerberg missed the bus?

Mark Zuckerberg may have filled a niche when he created Facebook. I mean, does MySpace even exist anymore? For a man who has made real inroads in diversifying his business in the last 5 years, it’s remarkable how slow Facebook were in getting to the video scene. They have, however, finally arrived. Is it too little too late though?

The Monopoly of the internet!

Let us be honest here, if Facebook and Google combined, we’d see one of the most terrifyingly powerful companies on the planet. With Facebook’s billions of users and advertising profits combined with YouTube’s dominance of the advert revenue for video production you can understand why Mark Zuckerberg would want a piece of that pie.

The real question is, has he come too late to the party?

Are Facebook too late?

Facebook introduced the feature to add videos to a post a little over a year ago. The fact that it wasn’t really a dedicated service meant that it was more of a feature rather than an announcement. What we have now is a full-blown featured video service. Something they intend to bring into direct competition with YouTube reports the BBC.

I can not help but feel that this is not going to work. Facebook recently shut down its student based video service only last week after it failed to gain any interest and put simply, I do not see what niche they are filling here.

YouTube has the market covered for straight up video production. Twitch was late to the party too, but they filled a void in gaming and live streaming.

My best advice to Facebook?

If I was Mr Zuckerberg’s assistant, hopefully I’d be considerably better off than I am now. On top of that I would probably make the following suggestions:

• Offer better advertising revenue to content providers. If you can’t get the big boys over, at least offer the little guy a bigger slice of the pie.
• Sign an exclusivity contract with a major YouTube personality.
• Try not to let any black cats cross your path and avoid walking under ladders.

Before you go looking for this feature, please be aware that at present it’s only released in the US. Although Facebook haven’t called it as such, it’s clearly a trial run.

I think that Facebook Watch is going to need a LOT of luck to survive. As above, YouTube got it right, Twitch filled a void. Sure, there’s Snapchat etc., but the idea of those is short and sweet, another void filled. Doesn’t leave a lot for Facebook Watch does it?