Facebook is reportedly trying to be more than just the landing page for conspiracy theories and election propaganda – it wants you to come for the videos, baby. It’s a play to rival YouTube, but YouTube’s CEO, Susan Wojcicki, doesn’t seem too threatened.
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Wojcicki told Recode‘s Kara Swisher during its Code Media conference yesterday, according to CNBC, that “you always have to take your competitors seriously,” adding that she wasn’t aware of Facebook’s video efforts beyond what was reported on by the press and analysts. But when pushed on what types of efforts from Facebook might concern Wojcicki, she took her shot.
“I mean, I think they should focus on what they’re focused on,” Wojcicki said. “I think they should get back to baby pictures and sharing.”
Quips aside, Facebook still has yet to prove itself as a serious competitor in the video platform space. Watch, its tab with exclusive video content for the social network, launched in September. It was viral garbage, and unlike YouTube, it didn’t allow you to search for videos within the page. But recent reports suggest Facebook is going to let more content creators upload videos to the Watch tab – and for free, rather than the social network buying the rights to their shows.
This is great news for small content creators recently screwed over by Google’s new monetisation rules, and it will certainly pave the way for more videos, but that isn’t always better. That’s especially true if moderators fail to efficiently police the platform for hateful and inappropriate content – an issue both YouTube and Facebook have grappled with for years.
For the sake of our fried and tortured brains, “baby pictures and sharing” doesn’t sound like such a terrible idea.