It has been neither subtle or quiet that they’re trying to break into the online video market and now it’s been announced that Facebook will let you “Watch Later”. More and more tinkering is being done on the social media website to better accommodate users with their videos.
The new function will appear on the bottom right corner of every video on your News Feed. It will save videos should the user mean to watch it at a later date or perhaps share it with friends at another time. The videos will be filed under the “Saved” tab on the left side, where the users could browse through them if they wish to watch it fully or repeatedly.
If history is taken into consideration on how the feature has done on other video streaming websites, it’s not very likely to find great success, but that’s not the true story behind their update. Facebook has been loudly stomping through the door of online video services and hasn’t politely said ‘Excuse me’ when they kept stepping on YouTube’s toes. Their ambitions are obvious and their intention clear that they want a share of the successful branch of video streaming.
It’s perhaps understandable, and YouTube’s CEO, Susan Wojcicki, seemingly feels the way. Her statements neither included nor implied any worries about potential competition as they have all seen it coming for a long time. Online video platforms have seen great success and they’re unlikely to stop anytime soon.
Other social media networking websites such as Twitter, with its rapidly growing Vine, and Instagram, YouTube has been expecting their invasion into the domain and understandably so. They do not have a patent on online videos, they have not been the firsts or the only ones, but they have been the strongest for a long time.
They do sound welcome of the competition. The CEO has recognized Facebook as a formidable opponent in the online video market, which is becoming painfully clear, but has also emphasized their differences. While Facebook videos play automatically on the News Feed, YouTube maintains its aspect of trying to engage users by searching and selecting their content individually.
The question is now if YouTube might actually be in trouble or not. Perhaps. Perhaps not. It has yet to be decided, even though YouTube has a bit of a lead, along with a partnership with Google, who has a promising number of projects waiting to be released.
Facebook’s advantage might just be that it’s continually evolving. The company is constantly tinkering, tweaking, changing and adding features, until perhaps one day, they might force other websites to catch up.
On the other hand, Facebook is not the only one with ambitions and YouTube is not promising to sit still and wait for them.
Image source: whatlauderdale.com
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