Facebook is doing everything it can to beat YouTube in video

By: Mark Hoelzel


Facebook is reportedly exploring a new tactic to directly insert music videos into Facebook users' News Feeds, according to The New York Times. Currently, music videos are typically hosted on video sites such as YouTube or Vimeo, and then shared to social networks where plays of those videos either redirect the user to the origin site or credit the site that houses the content. If Facebook were to complete the licensing deals it's allegedly in talks about with major record labels, YouTube would lose views of its music videos, one of its most popular content segments.

Facebook's music video plan underscores the social network's growing prominence as a video distribution channel, and is just the most recent development in Facebook's endeavor to be a premier video source.

Earlier this year, Facebook announced that its video uploads would be embeddable on other websites, and it's already working on accommodating virtual and augmented reality videos.

Video streaming is growing significantly on mobile, and Facebook already has a leg up. Mobile devices account for 65% of Facebook's video views, whereas half of YouTube's video views come from mobile. Facebook's app accounted for more mobile data traffic than that of YouTube in all three markets.

Now, Facebook is demonstrating its ability to attract major video creators to its platform. To accomplish this, the social network appears to be offering the record labels better revenue sharing terms compared than YouTube, according to the report. This could severely hurt YouTube, which has benefited from its creators' lack of alternative distribution and monetization options. The record labels will join a number of premium video publishers who have flocked to the social network to upload videos: Michelle Phan, Complex, Mic, and TYT Network have all turned to Facebook to upload videos, according to Fortune.