Can Facebook Dethrone YouTube on Video?

Facebook announced this week that they’re getting serious about video piracy. They released “new video matching technology [that can] alert selected content creators if their videos [are] reposted to Facebook without permission.” Facebook is serious about their video platform and this latest release is just one of many moves they’ve made to position themselves as serious video contenders against YouTube.

But does Facebook really have a chance against the longstanding video giant?

There’s a good incentive for them to try. In 2014 video accounted for 67% of all internet traffic. And Cisco predicts that by 2019 video will move up to 80% of all traffic. This means money is definitely moving away from traditional display ads and toward video-sponsored ads, so there is a lot of pressure on the current internet giants to get video right, right now.

Recently some ado has been made about how much traction Facebook-native video has been getting on Facebook. The numbers are pretty impressive – by the last quarter of 2014, 80% of interactions with video on Facebook went to Facebook-native video (meaning videos uploaded directly to Facebook and not shared there from another platform). Most of that 80% interaction was won from YouTube videos shared on the social media platform, YouTube went from 32% at the beginning of the year to 13% at the end of it.

There are a lot of factors that go into Facebook’s winning numbers though, so the boost may not be as significant as it seems. First off, Facebook autoplays native video, that alone probably makes their interaction numbers go through the roof. Facebook also controls the algorithm for how content is displayed in a user’s news feed, so it’s a pretty safe bet that native video gets seen more and therefore gets more likes and shares based on the higher volume of eyeballs that see the video. Plus, those numbers are just on the Facebook platform. Statistics show that over its life, a video on YouTube gets more engagement than on Facebook.

From a video creator perspective YouTube is still leaps and bounds ahead on security controls, automatically blocking content that appears to infringe on copyright. YouTube also offers better and more robust statistics and multi-platform viability to video creators – though Facebook is catching up, introducing a view counter at the end of last year and creating embed options early in 2015.

YouTube has a tried and tested ad-sharing platform that will continue to encourage video creators to post their videos on that platform. Facebook announced earlier this year that they’re going to start sharing ad revenue with video creators with a new “suggested videos” feed, but it’s unclear exactly how that revenue model will break down right now. Finally, YouTube also has an awesome search engine behind it – both on the platform and on Google results – so videos don’t move out of a news feed and get lost in obscurity.

But half of the online world uses Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that Facebook passed 1 billion in one day mark – 1 in 7 people in the world were on the platform at some time during the day.

Facebook says that they’re committed to develop a “comprehensive video management system”, so that should be enough to at least give YouTube pause.

Either way, with more and more videos being created and shared online, it’s important that everyone has a tool to easily move and share their videos across multiple devices and with multiple people. Wispeo makes sharing high-resolution videos super easy, allowing a user to send up to 3GB of data for free to anyone with an email address. Plus, Wispeo works as a free video converter allowing you to convert your videos into several different formats that play nice with other devices.

Soon, with the Wispeo apps for iOS and Android, you’ll be able to easily get HD videos off your phone and with the people who want to watch them. Watch for the app in mid-September.

What do you think: can Facebook really overtake YouTube as the No. 1 video platform on the internet?

Wispeo is now mobile! Get the easiest way to share videos and photos from your phone in the App Store or from Google Play.

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