Facebook started 2015 by publishing numbers on the popularity of videos. In 2014 the overall average of the videos posted per person increased by 94 percent in US and 75 percent globally, according to Facebook.
YouTube leads in online video posting. It exceeded one billion viewers per month. Facebook aims to threaten YouTube’s dominance in 2015. News Feed changes its composition thanks to people that create and interact with more and more videos on Facebook. It has been recorded an increasing quantity of videos from brands and people by an astounding figure of 3.6 times over the previous year (2013). Every day since June last year an average of one billion video views has been registered. 76 percent of US Facebook users reported that the videos watched on Facebook are unseen ones. On top of that, more than 66 percent of video views take place on a mobile device. View counts for video content published straight to the social network started in 2014. An example of shifting the online video viewing is the advertisement of the last TV from Apple. “The Song” was viewed 3.2 million times on YouTube. More than 20.9 million views were recorded on Facebook, a figure that indicates clearly the shift mentioned above. A counterexample is the one relating to a video Taylor Swift published at the end of 2014. The video was watched on YouTube for 14.3 million times, on Facebook it was watched 4.2 million times.
Facebook wants to include more video from media companies and is keen to reach agreements. American football league (NFL) partnered with the social network before Christmas. Interviews, highlights and other footage have been and will continue to be posted on Facebook. The statistics attract new advertisers to share their videos on the social network.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook chief executive, said last October that video content, mainly short content, will evolve over the next months and years addressing to what people consume relating to News Feed.
Autoplay feature, the one that starts a video when users scroll past a video, although the video starts without sound, is responsible for the rise in numbers of video content viewed on Facebook.
The continued growth is a certain sign that adapting to user’s needs is the best way to evolve. Twitter is said that will launch its video service too, and this could happen soon, with the feature of uploading videos directly to the site.
Image Source: The Independent