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Zuckerberg: Most of Facebook Will Be Video Within Five Years
jfruh writes: Facebook recently held its first ever town-hall meeting in which Mark Zuckerberg took questions from the general public, and one of his answers might raise some eyebrows. When asked if the increasing numbers of photos being uploaded might strain the company's servers, he said the infrastructure is more than up to the task, because they're preparing for the notion that "in five years, most of [Facebook] will be video."
I find it increasingly more and more difficult to take Zuckerberg seriously.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Autoplay HTML5 video is the scourge on the Internet. Is there a way to stop it?
And most of the comments will be trash
And in five years, we'll all be using a system where we wave our hands around in the air to do gestures to control our computers! /sarcasm
Most of Facebook is moms reposting the same jokes and images over and over again. I actually think I see where Zuckerburg might going with this: since media companies are getting smarter about packing their mass-market content as "clips" (e.g., Jimmy Fallon's bits), they're getting easier for mere mortals to post. However, I don't think any significant portion of videos will actually get posted to Facebook - instead it'll all still be hosted on YouTube, media sites (e.g., NBC) or somewhere else.
I can't think of any impediments I have to uploading more video to Facebook right now. If I wanted to upload more videos I'd upload more videos, but they don't usually make sense where text, stills, or links do.
So Mark must be betting that they'll make sense in five years when they don't now - I wonder what his reasoning could possibly be.
I hope he doesn't mean that people will be video recording their status updates. There's a reason many people call it "Dumpbook" - the tile wall in the background is sort of a giveaway.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It will mostly be video. Yeah. Just like MySpace. And we all know how successful that was.
Proverbs 21:19
Zuck thinks that Facebook will be relevant in 5 years.... how ADORABLE!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I don't see Facebook rolling out fiber like Google is.
Zuckerburg is looking to kill youtube.
Unfortunately, Google's own social network beat them to the punch.
That hasn't been my experience. These days, my Facebook feed seems to be filled with people posting Buzzfeed links to "20 sexy historical facts that will blow your mind!" or else it's a link that says "You won't believe what happens in this video!" without giving any explanation as to what's in the video.
In other words, it's mostly tedious, useless advertising for something or other.
They are going after Vine, and similar services, by making their own versions of them on Facebook.
But are they going to be vertical videos ?
Where's the video of Zuckerberg saying that Facebook will be mostly video?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Facebook will be completely irrelevant to the vast majority of people - pretty much where MySpace has been for the past half-decade.
Seriously - Facebook's user base is rapidly skewing older and older. When I mention Facebook to a young person, they generally either say they aren't on it at all anymore, or they say they only get on Facebook to stay in touch with their older relatives (mom, dad, grandma, etc.).
And, at least right now, there doesn't appear to be one dominant site where everyone under thirty has landed. Some hang out on Tumblr, some on Instagram, some only do SnapChat (I realize that's not a "site"), etc.
#DeleteChrome
I use facebook on my phone, when waiting for something, often in public places, where i don't want to play sound, nor do I want to record a video. I doubt I'm the only one.
People may be posting more videos, but text posts are not going away. Let's look at phones for comparison. Video apps like FaceTime are readily available, but I rarely see them in use. SMS was introduced well after voice calls, yet that somehow has become very popular. Video isn't going away, but it's definitely not replacing other more convenient means of communication.
This is not how we use Facebook today, and not how we use social networks in general. The difference between "most video" and "text-based news feed with pics" is very roughly the same as the difference between television and books - there're just different mediums (media?), and they do not replace but complement each other. And he says "we'll replace your book with a TV programme".
Which means that:
- either he expects Facebook users (really, most of us) to change our "information consumption" habits with time so that people will actually prefer video to text
- or he wants to change more text-oriented Facebook to a more video-oriented FaceTV, in effect creating a different kind of resource
Either seems like a significant change from what we have today. Yet Facebook succeeded as a text-with-pics-based platform, and while everyone understands we have to move on as times change and markets evolve, a change from a news-feed-from-friends-and-ads to some sort of an entertainment provider looks really risky from a business PoV.
Personally I don't come to Facebook to watch videos, and I in general watch videos rarely, because I like to focus on the message and not the carrier, and I like the music in my last.fm more anyways. If one day I come to Facebook and it's most videos, I, for one, would likely relegate Facebook to a feature-poor LinkedIn clone. I don't know how many people there are like myself, but who knows how much money people like myself add to their bottom line %-wise.
So basically, youtube?
Zuckerberg/Facebook thinks we're going to have "conversations" with video snippets? As it is, I hate most professionally produced instructional videos. In fact, advertising videos have created an enormous hurdle for ANY videos in the internet these days to overcome. (For instance, YouTube used to be fun to explore - but now the advertising on it discourages me from visiting it except for channels I'm already familiar with.)
If Facebook becomes just a way to deliver video, that will exterminate the "social" part of the social network (cue in Dalek's nasal "Exterminate!" cry here.)
It's one thing for the neolithic savages to herd the mastodon herd over the cliff to their deaths. Zuckerberg is offering to run off the edge without being goaded.
I won't be using Facebook in 5 years.
First, video is a pox. Most waste time with pointless or awkward intros, fail to make the point, or, -the worst-, communicate a technical point or information by repeating the unimportant stuff over and over and over. Most video should be text.
Second, a predominantly video Facebook guarantees it will NOT be user-created. You're not creating a quick video on the A train, or being stuck on the PCH, or walking to school. Oh, wait, you are. And doing it badly. Point 1 again.
Never mind. Video will still suck.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I want full video slashdot - find out how pretty you all are...
Yeah, just like how everyone now communicates via "video phone" (aka Facetime (TM), etc, etc) instead of just talking on the phone. Oh wait, we don't even use the phone any more, we use mostly written text. How many prognosticators of future technology utterly failed on that one too? Video is not the logical culmination of still images. It is something totally different. Nor was the music video the logical culmination of merely listening to music. He's looking too closely at things like technology and infrastructure and ignoring the higher level constructs and why people prefer one over the other.
Better known as 318230.
It was nice of them to plant and then take that question from the general public.
When I poke a link to a news item, if it leads to a video, rather than waiting for the commercial to load and play, and the talking heads to stop self promoting and get to the point, I've long since dismissed the tab and found the news item somewhere else as text.
The more Facebook forces video, the less interesting it is.
And of course, Google will copy everything Facebook does, so G+ will be screwed also.
I'm going back to Usenet. run-on puns were better than this. (It was just a capital-K to get rid of them.)
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
People on /. are criticizing this comment, but he's almost certainly correct if he's speaking in terms of storage.
Suckerturd will still be a douchelord tool...
So in 5 years Facebook will become MySpace?
No. Next!
If you think FB is going to be primarily video content in 5 years, you haven't been watching net neutrality and the laws ISPs and media producers are trying to get passed which severely limits user bandwidth.
Unless you're going to be paying to get rid of those laws yourself, Mark, you're just a witless fucking idiot without any real eye on the future.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I would imagine that by amount of storage used, mostly video is not a bad guess.
>Zuckerberg/Facebook thinks we're going to have "conversations" with video snippets?
No, he expects Facebook users are going to have conversations with video snippets. This has nothing to do with the general population. He's judged his users well enough so far, so there's no reason to believe he's mistaken now. I expect that a lot of people are going to move into VR for their conversations, which means routing and likely storing massive amounts of video.
In 5 years, I won't remember what Facebook is.
Unless he is talking about physical server space.
It's like the business telephone: after skype and its copycats, all real business calls have been done over video. I can't remember the last time I took a landline or cell phone call at work; the most use my old handset gets is when I'm talking to telemarketers. I can totally see social media moving in the same dircetion (much like most messaging moved to chat-like clones after all the kids started using them in place of email).
Seriously? 90% of Facebook is currently graphics certainly not worth 1000 words: they literally are about eight to thirty words, total, with some public domain clipart or unlicensed pop-culture icons. I don't do "meme pictures." If I have a message, I type it.
I've never understood the point of podcasts other than for music or other performance: If I want news, I can read it in 1/10th the time.
And video? What, am I deaf and need to see your body language and lips move? Sure, for educational, entertainment clips, and of course cute animals... but otherwise? Nope.
And get off my lawn.
Design for Use, not Construction!
In five years, "Facebook" will exist only as a commemorative youtube video.
I think he's implying VR. Oculus + Facebook = Second Life for humans.
be here in 5 years?
Except that tiered Internet services with bandwidth caps are going to prevent these kinds of technology from going anywhere. We're at the stage of Internet evolution that we have technology to accommodate almost any service but rather than deploy it we'll keep milking our assets until we're forced to upgrade. Then the upgrade will be a lot more costly so we can milk it again.
Of course competition isn't always the best way to achieve efficiency. Look at mobile platforms in the US compared with Europe. If we had all standardized on transmission technology like the TV broadcast industry did then we wouldn't need to pay near as much to upgrade infrastructure from 2,3,4, and now 5G connection standards. Instead Verizon uses proprietary technology so you can't take your hardware with you, Sprint uses still other proprietary technology leaving them with crappy reception in a lot of areas.
Call me old school, but for most of those videos, pictures would do the job (or a better one)
Looking for a how-to for something? Gimme pictures, you can't print a video (for one). I don;t need nor want to watch a video (often with horrible music) when 5 pictures and 10 lines of text does exactly the same thing.
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
The photos are bad enough. Video will be even worse. Hopefully he's wrong.
I absolutely detest video on blogs/sites/etc. instead of text and where appropriate pictures. Text I can quickly skim through, get to the relevant part, etc.
Video you have to wait a few seconds for it to start, then most of the time have to apply the 30(?)-second-rule, if it's slow you can't fast-forward and you just hope you're luckly you find the relevant bit. Note: the 30 second rule is not the one about making an impression, it's about skipping the leader, the talking head that explains what you're about to see, etc.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
Video 5 years from now will also include VR and other ways of person-person interaction, hence the Oculus purchase. A Facebook full of videos would suck on a web browser, but this statement is assumes peripherals 5 years from now. It's exactly what Facebook should be preparing for.
And usage per active user. It's declining and has been for a while.
No it's not going anywhere anytime soon but younger users are the life blood of these sites and they've been peeling off for a while.
Online spending vs age:
56-66: $122 / month
46-55: $106 / month
23-31: $103 / month
18-22: $43 / month
If I'm Facebook, trying to put ads in front of buyers, college kids are a waste of my time. I want baby boomers.
That hasn't been my experience. These days, my Facebook feed seems to be filled with people posting Buzzfeed links to "20 sexy historical facts that will blow your mind!" or else it's a link that says "You won't believe what happens in this video!" without giving any explanation as to what's in the video.
In other words, it's mostly tedious, useless advertising for something or other.
They thought this comment was pointless, but they never saw this coming...
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
Take a look at AOL. Yahoo. That's where you will be in five years.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
I think it's not so much that no one cares as that decent video calls require more infrastructure than a phone. The camera needs to be steady, lighting needs to be good, sound isolation needs to be good... all in all, video calls work much better from a laptop sitting on a desk in an office, or better yet in a conference room with dedicated video-conferencing equipment.
And some goes for most other forms of video.
Making a decent video clip instead of just quickly recording something with a camera phone, is difficult.
Much more than putting some effort into a photo.
Until some startup finds a way to do the video equivalent of Instagram (i.e.: making it easy to create nice video clips) video won't be a major communication medium.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
There's no ads on youtube, never have been...oh wait, are you one of those people who is unable to install a simple ad-blocking extension?
No, the real scourge of youtube and is the sheer number of videos of some douche doing a straight to cam in a slow rambling talk about how to do some really simple thing e.g. change a registry key to fix something or other. It would take just a two line description in the text to say how to do it, but instead they want you to watch an add laden piece of crap in the hope of actually monetising this tiny piece of information. Worse still are the ones where it's just a basic slide show of the actual text on a background, with some awful music blaring over the whole thing. The video is timed for people with the reading speed and skills of an 8 year old.
Google tends to prioritise these over useful text sites, because, well, it's their content after all and it delivers ads to people and they are an ad company.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
will be MySpace in 5 years.
Interesting way to misspell that name. Add an "er", it will be ZuckerBurger making Zucker the equivalent of Ham or Cheese.
Most of what I read on Crapbook is still text written by friends. Most of them don't even post camera-phone pictures of what's going on, never mind take videos.
Zuckerberg overestimates the ease of creating videos and uploading them to any service. Even if it were easy, people still don't tend to be taking video of what's going on in their lives. They're too busy living their lives to play videographer.
Telling someone to come here for a sec so you can take a "selfie" together is no big deal. Sitting on the sidelines and video taping the party that's going on would be rude and would take you out of the social scene while you're recording it.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I don't know why bring in podcasts. Audio podcasts have their place, when the eyes are otherwise occupied -- when driving, walking, exercising, cleaning and many other situations. (I'm not saying people should have media on constantly, but podcasts are sometimes a good tool to ease the boredom)
video needs a totally different type of attention. You need sound, you need attention to only one thing, you cannot really multitask, it consumes more time than reading text and looking at images and you can skip through text without missing the important parts, but you cannot easily skip inside a video and be sure not to skip over something important.
video is no usecase for "just reading what my cousin did today", its something for people wanting to invest their time into something interesting.
Videos will come from marketers trying to spam you to death with commercials and ads.
The longer they can glue your eyes on the screen, the more they can sell to you.
The Internet is trying to dumb you down, make you fat and lazy.
Everybody is guilty.
News sites like Yahoo already try to do this by giving you news stories as videos.
I DO NOT want to watch a video for news. That is for vegetables and potato heads.
I have a brain. I want to read it.
Yes, and once those Baby Boomers with their cemented and ossified spending habits and preferences die off and the young college kids are making more money but have already had their buying habits shaped and controlled by the competition who spent their dollars planning for the long term, what then?
Not saying that this is right or that you're wrong but there's a little more involved than straight dollars to dollars here...
Have a Virgin Mobile USA smartphone? Give VMRoms.com a try!
There's a lot of service providers that cap their customer's data in the US and Canada so this falls dead immediately.
Those are trivially easy to go away, at least on a PC blocking entire sites is just a matter of two mouse clicks. But ultimately, the problem isn't Facebook - it's your "friends". Facebook can't fix stupid.
Glad to see I'm not the only one around here who grasps that....
Not to mention half the problems people seem to have Facebook aren't actually Facebook's problems - it's that their friends are idiots.
Where were you for the ice bucket challenge?
At present FB rules in sharing your EXCITEMENT
Casteism
Facebook can't fix stupid, but it sure can encourage it!
"it's getting easier to capture video of the moments of your lives and share it"
Exactly. Yes, but can capture it, but we cannot consume it in the same manner.
You can record all the video you want, but you're probably going to hit less of a broad audience simply because a mark-I eyeball can only parse video at a fairly slow rate. Also, just because you can make a video doesn't mean it will be *interesting* video
Thus, as boring as it is, I can read and parse "bobby used the potty for the first time today" in about 1 second, but I'm certainly not going to dedicate 5 minutes to watching it.
[for the above, "you" means the person posting on social media)