Wednesday, August 29, 2018

Facebook ‘Watch’ goes global; Instagram adds verifications

Influencers are getting an even bigger platform—and Facebook wants a bigger share of the creator community.

Facebook’s on-demand video offering, called “Watch,” launched last year, but now the service is being rolled out worldwide.

Engadget reported:

Facebook launched Watch last year in the US as a platform for episodic TV content, and now it's going international. The social media company announced that the VOD service will be "available everywhere" as of now, giving creators around the world an alternative to YouTube. "We are supporting publishers and creators globally in two critical areas: helping them to make money from their videos on Facebook and better understand how their content is performing," said Facebook in a statement.

Shows in the US that have taken off include Red Table Talk with Jada Pinkett Smith (2.9 million followers) and beauty industry mogul Huda Kattan's Huda Boss, along with PGA Tour and Major League Baseball sports coverage. Facebook said that up to 50 million people tune in to Watch for at least a minute per month, though you should take its video numbers with a grain of salt. Upcoming shows will feature Cristiano Ronaldo and Catherine Zeta Jones.

Facebook hopes to offer a more social viewing experience to compete with other video platforms, including YouTube.

Reuters reported:

Facebook’s Head of Video Fidji Simo said Watch was gaining real momentum in a crowded marketplace because it was built on the notion that watching videos could be a social activity.

“Every month more than 50 million people in the U.S. come to watch videos for at least a minute on Watch, and total time spent watching video on Facebook Watch has increased by 14 times since the start of 2018,” she told reporters.

Facebook doesn’t have a great track record of paying video creators and publishers, but creators can earn revenue from their “Watch” channel.

[RELATED: Overcome your biggest challenges in internal comms, PR and social media]

Reuters reported:

Ad revenue will be split 55 percent for the content creator and 45 percent for Facebook, the same ratio as in the United States, Simo said.

Publishers need to have created three-minute videos that have generated more than 30,000 one-minute views in total over the past two months and must have 10,000 followers to participate in Ad Breaks, Facebook said.

Simo said Facebook was working on a variety of other options for creators to make money, such as branded content and the ability for fans to directly support their favorite creators through subscriptions.

Instagram offers a ‘verified’ badge

Social media users may be more familiar with the controversial Twitter verified badge, but Instagram has offered a similar feature—albeit in much smaller circulation.

TechCrunch reported:

On Instagram, blue check marks are fairly rare, even among pretty big brands and public figures. Getting verified on the platform has long been the stuff of legend — no one quite knows what goes on behind the scenes but knowing a guy doesn’t hurt. Remarkably, there’s even a super sketchy black market where people charge thousands of bucks to hook you up with verified status (or more likely to just rip you off). The whole thing has always been kind of mysterious, with little blue checks quietly sprinkled around in no discernible pattern.

It looks like those days are over. While it’s too early to tell if Instagram will be handing out more verified badges to users, they’ve at least made the process much more transparent. Now, any user can request to be verified with a few steps. As a note: In our testing, the option to request verification is live now in iOS but hasn’t yet popped up in the updated Android app.

Instagram wants its version of the little blue badge to be a way of verifying your interaction with a major celebrity or global brand. For Instagrammers who believe they warrant the classification, TechCrunch outlines these next steps:

1. Request verification: This option is found within your settings menu on the app.

2. Provide documentation: Instagram accepts official government IDs like passports or driver’s licenses. For companies, you can use a tax filing or articles of incorporation.

3. Wait for a reply: If you are rejected you can reapply in 30 days.

With great power comes great responsibility—and in Instagram’s eyes, a verified account should be beyond reproach.

Instagram says the requirements for a verified account include being authentic, unique, complete and notable. Being authentic is as simple as representing a real person or entity. Being complete means having filled out every part of your account profile.

Some believe Instagram’s verified system to be preferable to Twitter’s.

The Verge reported:

The company has verified that you are who you say you are; that you only have one account; and that the account is “notable” in some way. What does that mean? The Help Center lays it out: “Currently, only Instagram accounts that have a high likelihood of being impersonated have verified badges.”

The policy isn’t democratic in the sense of Dorsey’s spring proclamation that someday everyone could have a badge on Twitter. But it does open the door to more people getting badges on Instagram, and doing its part to improve trust on the service.

How will these changes affect your social media strategy, PR Daily readers?

(Image via)



from PR Daily News Feed https://ift.tt/2BYBtYn

No comments:

Post a Comment