As eyeballs shift from TVs to the Web, Facebook wants to cash in on its 2 billion plus users worldwide, 1.32 billion being active daily users, through ads inserted in videos. Facebook will enter into partnerships with content creators; in a deal that will see the social network get 45% of the ad break revenue, and the rest remains with the partners.
The Watch tab is currently in test mode, and only available to a small group of users in the U.S. Users can view the Watch tab on their mobile, desktop, and the Facebook TV apps. Now Facebook will give users more reasons to return to the social network; especially to watch original videos they cannot get anywhere else.
How Facebook Watch tab works
The Watch tab will have personalized recommendations for both live and recorded videos. It will also categorize videos into sections like ‘Most Talked About,’ ‘What’s Making People Laugh,’ and ‘Shows Your Friends Are Watching.’
To attract new viewership, publishers can share their shows to News Feed in a bid to help users discover new videos. Facebook is also integrating a Watchlist feature that lets user subscribe to updates on new episodes release. Fans can also connect with each other, and the creators via a new Facebook feature that links shows to Groups.
Facebook will first avail Watch to all users across the U.S. before expanding it to other world regions. To view videos under the Watch tab, hit the TV-like button located at the bottom of the navigation bar on the app.
Facebook says they have “also funded some shows” but goes further to say that those are just a small percentage of all videos that will be available. “We want any publisher/creator who is interested to be able to create a show in the future. So there will be hundreds of shows at launch, and we’ll hopefully scale to thousands,” said a Facebook spokesperson to TechCrunch.
