It’s amazing how quickly live video has permeated the industry. It’s gone from nowhere to everywhere, and there are perhaps no bigger leaders in pushing live video forward than Facebook and Twitter. What’s interesting, though, is the differences in the platforms’ approaches and what they seem to view as live video’s role in their businesses.
Read MoreAs it turns out, it’s sometimes “pay-to-play” for Facebook, too. That’s kind of nice to hear when it’s been Facebook making advertisers pay to get their content seen by even fans on the social network. Now, even it ispaying to get content created and seen. We’re talking video.
Facebook with live video, Instagram with Discover pages dedicated to video, Twitter with live streaming partnerships are all examples of how video is becoming the dominant form of communication. And the stakes are huge. So huge in fact that Facebook is paying influencers as high as $244,000 to create Facebook Live content. The big price tags are meant to draw influencers away from YouTube, Vine and Snapchat and get them onto Facebook Live. Influencers bring eyeballs. Eyeballs bring ad dollars.
All signs point to video’s presence only growing on platforms, and marketers must pay attention.
Read MoreThe Internet has brought about an age of disruption. That’s no secret. From Tesla to Uber to Airbnb to one start-up after another, disruption is all around us, but there is perhaps no greater disruptor that is also a target from fellow disruptors than Facebook. It’s upended the Internet as we know it (with fellow co-conspirators like, most notably, Google), while at the same time being threatened on all sides by the competition (like… Google).
Read MoreFacebook has a problem on its hands. A problem it’s dubbed context collapse, which is the decline in the amount of original content sharing from users. Fewer and fewer users are turning to Facebook to share their everyday lives. Original content sharing is down 20% on the platform. Instead, platforms like Snapchat are taking over when it comes to personal sharing.
Read MoreFacebook Live is big. Well, maybe not yet, but if Facebook has anything to do about it, it will be. What started out as a feature exclusive to celebrities has quickly become the platform’s focus. Now, it’s algorithm is rewarding live video content by placing it higher in the News Feed. It’s even given live video its own, very prominent position within the mobile app.
Then f8 happened.
Read MoreWhen Facebook announces a new feature, it’s a good idea to pay attention because that feature typically becomes the platform’s focus and what it will do everything it can to drive to. Facebook’s latest focus for brands is Messenger, the platform that now has more than 900 million users flocking to to send messages back-and-forth with friends.
Facebook doesn’t see Messenger as being for users alone. It wants brands to be there, and last week it launched several new features to make it more effective for brands, including vanity URLs that brands can drive users to in order to message them and more high-profile placement of those URLs on Facebook Pages. These are just the latest in a slew of updates made to Messenger to make it more useful for brands to engage consumers in one-on-one conversations. Clearly, that’s what Facebook wants users to do.
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