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Facebook Launches Watch Tab For Video Shows, Uses TV's 75-Year-Old Marketing Pitch (marketwatch.com)

Posted by msmash on from the eureka-moment dept.

From a report: Facebook's push toward original video content will take a big step forward Thursday with the launch of a new section, dubbed Watch. The new tab, which Facebook FB, said late Wednesday will launch for a limited number of U.S. users for now, will feature about 40 original series, with plans to eventually scale up to hundreds of shows. Facebook said it will become available to more users in the coming weeks. The Mountain View, Calif., social network is hoping to tap into lucrative TV advertising revenue to boost its ever-expanding bottom line. If successful, Watch could stem the ad-load slowdown for the rest of the year that Chief Financial Officer David Wehner warned about last month when Facebook filed its quarterly earnings. Facebook also hopes the Watch tab will open up a new method of advertising that doesn't clutter users' News Feeds, and keep its 2 billion users on its site longer. Company's founder Mark Zuckerberg is understandably very excited about the move. He says the company believes "it's possible to rethink a lot of experiences through the lens of building community -- including watching video. Watching a show doesn't have to be passive. It can be a chance to share an experience and bring people together who care about the same things." If that pitch sounds familiar to you, it's because TV has been doing it for more than 75 years.

40 comments

  1. WTF? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is like a hit piece on Zuckerberg over something that nobody would think twice about.

    People have said before that TV can bring people together? So fucking what? Do we have a societal expectation that TV discussions all have totally unique ideas behind them?

    1. Re:WTF? by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 1

      I thought the summary was strange too, but I took it as Facebook's reaction to more realtime comments showing up in YouTube and other video providers. (Even some of my pirate streams offer a chat window now.)

      It's "new" because it's likely aimed at Millennials and younger. Gen-X'ers like me (and older) could give a shit what anyone else thinks while they're watching their favorite show since most of us have used TV at one point or another to AVOID interacting with the people around us.

  2. Slow day? by FilmedInNoir · · Score: 0

    Facebook adding a new button is a major news story?

    --
    Sig. Sig. Sputnik
    1. Re:Slow day? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Anything a platform, used by over 2 billion people, with several more services, that are individually used by over a billion of people, does is newsworthy.

    2. Re:Slow day? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not just facebook, but "Facebook FB" as the summary puts it.

    3. Re:Slow day? by epyT-R · · Score: 0

      I disagree. Did you know that all the people on this planet breathe O2? While this is true, it is not newsworthy.

    4. Re:Slow day? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Actually that was pretty big news when they discovered the biochemistry behind respiration, it's just not newsworthy anymore.

    5. Re:Slow day? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Facebook FBI - Crime has nowhere to hide [on social media] when the FFBI is on the case.
      This weeks case: The Troll's Liar. The FFBI DOX a 10 year after he leaves a hurtful comment concerning Zuckerberg liking Spiderman more than Batman.

    6. Re: Slow day? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If it were to change it would be pretty big fucking news, no ?

  3. Watch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Watch" what a creepy name, coming from FaceBook.
    Who watches the watcher? You already know the answer to that.

    1. Re:Watch by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 1

      Ten years ago, if Facebook announced it was adding "Watch" people would have asked "WTF do they need to add a clock for?"

      Then again, it was Facebook that did a naming faceplant on "Graph".

  4. Facebook TV by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Good god, what kind of "original" programming could fakebook possibly come up with? Are we gonna see a reboot of Cribs or something equally vain and vapid?

    1. Re:Facebook TV by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Videos scraped from YouTube and reposted on Facebook.

    2. Re:Facebook TV by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's literally the ONLY possible way they can just start on day one with 40 "original" series. It's either scraping existing "channels" from youtube, or hiring a bunch of "I wanna be famous" n00blets with shit ideas to create their own "program." I have serious doubts we'll see anything with the quality of a good AMC show or even with the spotty quality of a Netflix original.

  5. More things by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    More things to block with ublock origin

  6. No interest in watching age discrimination succeed by micahraleigh · · Score: 1

    No respect for any company that refuses to hire over 29 year olds

  7. So innovation on the internet nowadays... by rnturn · · Score: 1

    ...consists of turning it into television. Everybody (ISPs, especially) seems to want to do this now and it's pretty pathetic that these innovators can't think up something more original. But... it sort of goes hand in hand with the kind of innovative programming one finds on television (or coming out of Hollywood).

    Maybe Ursula Le Guin was on to something:

    Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.

    --
    CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
    1. Re:So innovation on the internet nowadays... by mikael · · Score: 1

      The progressives want to use television for more than information or entertainment. They want to use it to shape public opinion and guide society in the right direction. So they will have TV programming followed by a debate where those with those with the right ideas are supported and those with the wrong ones are corrected.

      If you read any discussion about TV these days, you'll see everyone over 30 say they are tuning out and turning off because music is more about women shaking their asses and singing about sex than anything else, there are too many darned adverts on TV, movies are all killing and violence.

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
  8. Re:No interest in watching age discrimination succ by epyT-R · · Score: 1

    FB uses cult psychology, so it's no shock they'd use that in the workplace too. It's easier to indoctrinate the young.

  9. Weird corollary by Black.Shuck · · Score: 1

    a chance to share an experience and bring people together who care about the same things

    Hey, kind of like human society in general.

    Saying that, this is certainly not how I experienced television when I used to watch it. Interactions went a little more like...

    "Hey, did you see the thing?"
    "No, I was not interested to see the thing."
    "THEN WE HAVE NOTHING TO TALK ABOUT >:|"

  10. Damn Dude! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Cash in and go home already!

  11. Re:No interest in watching age discrimination succ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    better get the fuck out of the IT industry stat, those of us over 30 are dinosaurs and will not make it past interview #2 (if we get to #2) because there are 40 fresh faced little hipsters willing to do that job for an entry level wage.

    It's not just facebook my friend, it's basically all of IT.

  12. Not Interested by unixcorn · · Score: 2

    I cut the cord a couple of years ago and primarily watch Netflix or Amazon Prime video. Both contain commercial-free content which I am happy to pay for. I do watch TV (over the air) occasionally and the commercials are so pathetically mind numbing that I can't stand them. I often wonder who they are pandering to because I find them so offensive. Which brings me to my point, I won't be watching any streaming crap that contains ads or commercials. So good luck with that facebook.

    1. Re:Not Interested by Gilgaron · · Score: 1

      Have you tried listening to FM radio in a while? It's the same at it used to be but worse, somehow, after getting used to cached internet radio stations sans commercials...

    2. Re:Not Interested by nwf · · Score: 1

      I gave up on FM because of the incessant commercials 15 years ago. I tried again while on vacation, and it's definitely much worse. I don't know how anyone can manage to listen to the radio and not go insane. 25% of air time is commercials or inane talking. The music is overly compressed and every station plays the same songs. Over. And. Over.

      Thankfully, one can get music without that crap easily.

      TV isn't much better these days. If drug companies and law firms stopped advertising, most cable channels would go out of business.

      --
      I don't know, but it works for me.
    3. Re:Not Interested by nwf · · Score: 1

      At least with cable TV you can DVR to skip commercials, or stream videos without commercials. I'd rather cancel my FB account that watch a single streaming commercial. LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are so ad happy that I find I've largely lost the desire to visit them anymore.

      I think they are just foaming at the mouth trying to increase their stock price that they'll try any dumb thing. Watching commercials are becoming an artifact of history for video. They are focusing on innovating the past instead of giving people something original.

      --
      I don't know, but it works for me.
    4. Re:Not Interested by Shotgun · · Score: 1

      Only 25%??!!?? Where do you live. Try using the radio during any normal time commute. I was counting before I quit listening. A 30 minute drive my play two songs. Listen for an hour, and you would hear those two songs again. I did learn a lot about the laughing hyena's bathroom habits, though.

      --
      Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
      Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
    5. Re:Not Interested by Gussington · · Score: 1

      We have a bit a game whenever the family is in the car, as soon as the radio stations stops playing music we flick to the next station looking for another song. These days it's getting harder and harder to find music so we are increasingly switching over to Spotify more and more often.
      I like the randomness of radio surfing rather than me choosing a genre as with Spotify, but it is almost impossible to do these days.

  13. Re:No interest in watching age discrimination succ by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    That may be true for engineers and management. Everything else is outsourced. Outsourced contractors are more interested in finding warm bodies. I had a weekend job as PC disconnect/reconnect for a moving company in 2011, doing a half-dozen assignments at Facebook's Palo Alto locations. I was 42 at the time.

  14. Fatal Flaw by darkain · · Score: 1

    Facebook's video play has a massive fatal flaw. If the video loses focus, it automatically pauses. Yup, this means absolutely ZERO multi-tasking at all. You're forced to watch the video and nothing else. This is especially frustrating when having multiple monitors. I do a lot of batch work which requires interaction once every 20 seconds or so to launch a new script. It is easy for me to watch a video and keep an eye on the production screen at the same time. Simply clicking on that second window kills the video I was watching on FB.

    Most of the videos I'd be watching through FB are individual's streaming doing creative things like DIY tutorials n shit. With both YouTube and Twitch being more user-friendly streaming services, this absolutely kills the desire to even touch FB's streaming options.

    1. Re:Fatal Flaw by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe you can use a nested X server to contain the facebook browser.

  15. just what we need by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    YET ANOTHER online video streaming service with 'original' programming.

    HOLY FUCK.

    what the world needs is a 'meta streamer'.. like meta search engines of days-past, that aggregated results from dozens of search engines in one results page.

    a streaming service that puts all the 'free' content you would ever care to browse/search/view in one spot, along with all the programming options from the paid services. ONE site, ONE service, ONE bill (if applicable, split between the site to cover costs and the programming providers based on usage and viewership).

    1. Re:just what we need by Night+Goat · · Score: 1

      They're not QUITE there yet, but Pluto TV is kind of like this. I found it on my Roku and was impressed. They take a bunch of content from various websites and create channels and a programming schedule from it, and then present it to you much like a cable TV schedule is laid out. It's possible to flip channels like the old analog cable boxes would let you do. The content is mostly crap, but the presentation and idea are fantastic.

  16. nopers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Don't give a shit. Fuck Zuck and his gaping Internet anus shitting out fake Russian shitposters on democracy.

  17. Ummmm.... by MerlTurkin · · Score: 1

    Don't care, not on Facebook.

    1. Re:Ummmm.... by Gussington · · Score: 1

      Don't care, not on Facebook.

      I'm not either, but I'm interested in how FB seems to be trying to be the everything guy. And what happens when you try to please everyone...
      This is only going to end in bloat and then user will look elsewhere. While FB is popular now, so have lots of things that now aren't. I think this approach to try and do everything will ultimately be the end of them.

  18. Stop. by Mandrake · · Score: 1

    Just Stop.

    We didn't want disney to do it's own network, we barely tolerate hulu which is consumer-antagonistic in its practices.

    There's a reason a lot of us have deleted our facebook accounts, and that's because facebook does a piss poor job of managing its feed as-is. If you think this sort of gimmick will bring us back, you're wrong.

    --
    Geoff "Mandrake" Harrison
    Some Random UI Hacker
  19. Mountain View by manu0601 · · Score: 1

    The Mountain View, Calif., social network is hoping to tap into lucrative TV advertising revenue to boost its ever-expanding bottom line

    Facebook is not based in Mountain View. I suspect you confused with another California-based GAFA.

  20. better hurry by jezwel · · Score: 1

    Too much clutter, too much video, too many massive pictures when it's meant to be a plain text update. A single non-scrolling page is all they get from me now

  21. Need To Know by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What's 'Facebook'?