If you aren’t the social butterfly that almost everyone these days is, here’s some news that will annoy. Facebook, the technological flu that’s making almost every human on this planet dance to its tunes, wishes to intrude further into everyday human lives. Not content with the attention it receives through an individual’s cellphone and computer, it now wants to infect the Television too.
Mark Zuckerberg has announced that for 2017, the social media giant will turn its attention towards videos and will invest heavily in original content which has a shorter form. That includes, individual content posted by users, promotional content for brands and celebrities, and premium content posted by creators. Although he realizes that mainstream content will need to be supported by advertisements – and that is how it will be.
Zuckerberg wants Facebook to become competition for YouTube, which seems to rule to roost for now when it comes to videos. He wants his social media platform to become a hub for entertainment, where if someone thinks about watching any video content, Facebook comes to their mind naturally, just like Netflix, HBO, YouTube or even the rudimentary television remote does right now.
While announcing the company’s Q4 earnings, he said, “The goal that we have for the product experience is to make it so that when people want to watch videos or want to keep up to date with what’s going on with their favorite show, or what’s going on with a public figure that they want to follow, that they can come to Facebook and go to a place knowing that that’s going to show them all the content that they’re interested in. That’s a pretty different intent than why people come to Facebook today. The experience will be designed to deliver on that promise — if you want to watch videos, you want to keep up with the content that you watch episodically week over week. This is going to be the place where you go to do that.”
