Facebook seems to be gunning for YouTube, as it’s started shouting about the importance of video.
In a blog post, it boasted that in the last year, the number of video posts per person has increased by 75 per cent globally, and 94 per cent in the US.
“With people creating, posting and interacting with more videos on Facebook, the composition of News Feed is changing,” the post reads. “
“Since June 2014, Facebook has averaged more than 1 billion video views every day. On average, more than 50 per cent of people who come to Facebook every day in the US watch at least one video daily and 76 per cent in the US who use Facebook say they tend to discover the videos they watch on Facebook.”
Of course, these stats will have been bolstered by the fact that videos automatically start playing as you scroll past them.
Read more: Forget empty promises and stop experimenting on us, Facebook!
The blog post concludes with advice for budding video stars. Videos should fit in with photos and status updates from your friends and relatives, and should be “something your audience will want to watch and share”. It’s also important to “grab people from the first frame of video”, and that because the videos are muted until someone hits the volume, it’s important to hook people without using audio.
Facebook Messenger was the most downloaded app from Apple’s App Store in 2014. The fact that Facebook users who wanted to message others had to download it will have helped its success.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
