Facebook is introducing a dedicated 'searchable' place for video on the platform, making it a serious competitor in the online video space.
Previously, videos on the platform could only be found if users remembered where the video was originally shared. Facebook will now let users search all publically shared videos, including live-broadcasts, for easier discovery.
The feature will start rolling out today and will appear as a video icon within the mobile app. Tapping on this icon will take users to a personalised video stream, like that of the YouTube home screen.
It was announced at Facebook's results this year that 100 million hours of video are now being watched daily on the platform. YouTube has said there are six billion hours of video watched on its service each month.
"The two platforms offer very different experiences to consumers, with different demographics and different types of content posted," says Mike Wronski, director at Digital Flow. "There will be a place for both platforms for the foreseeable future, but the competition will be largely in the form of digital video ad spend being split among them."
Last year, a report by Ampere Analysis showed online videos are the fastest growing category of Internet adverts. A separate report released by ZenithOptimedia at the same time revealed online video will overtake TV advertising in 12 key markets, representing 28% of global ad spending by 2017.
Old versus new
"Traditionally, Facebook has been more of a real-time content consumption platform, with older content being lost inside of feed histories," says Wronski. "YouTube is used as a content store where it is much easier to find older, relevant content about any topic. Facebook wants to close this gap, and powerful search features are one way to do it."
"Online video is the next frontier of the media industry at large, not just an extension of social media," Brian Neilson, director at research firm BMI-TechKnowledge, said previously.
Neilson said it would make sense if Facebook had to eventually separate the video hub from the main app. "Facebook has already separated out Messenger in an attempt to raise its status relative to WhatsApp, WeChat, etc, and has achieved some success in this regard. Facebook is also a huge video-sharing portal. Separating video out as an app would make a lot of sense."
YouTube has an active user base of 7.2 million in the country, and Facebook has 11.8 million users, according to the South African Social Media Landscape 2015 report.
Yesterday, the social network extended its live-broadcasting option to allow for groups and events to use the feature. This is useful if a group on Facebook wants to live-broadcast a Q&A session, or if an event wants to show behind-the-scenes footage to attendees.
Nearly a billion
Facebook's separate messaging app, Messenger, has reached 900 million monthly active users and over a billion messages are sent across the platform each month.
The social network says it will start focusing more on using the app for business interactions. "Messaging a business directly is a fast and convenient way for people to get in touch with questions about products and services, appointments, customer service and more," Facebook said in a statement.
Last week, Dutch airline company KLM launched a bot on the service that allows passengers to check-in, get boarding passes and change flight details within the app.
Yesterday, the social network introduced page usernames. This feature makes it easier for people to find and talk directly to businesses. The new feature gives each company with a page on Facebook a unique username that can be set and edited.
The usernames will appear with an @ symbol before it and be used to search on both Facebook and Messenger. "Because each username is unique, they also help people to identify your exact business, even if you have a relatively common name," the company said.
The feature will be available globally over the coming weeks.
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