Facebook Launches A New 'Series' Feature to Drive Discovery
Source: Facebook
Facebook has launched a new Series feature for its video destination, Facebook Watch.
According to the social media platform, Series provides benefits in three key areas: organization, discovery, and user flow.
Organization:
As one would expect, Series allows creators to organize their video content into episodes. In addition to organizing them in chronological order, they can add seasons, brand logos (show marks), and show trailers.
Discovery:
When a video is added as a Series, video distribution is increased through related content recommendations. Additionally, Series are prominently highlighted on a user’s Facebook Page, increasing the chance that content part of a Series will be clicked into vs. a single video. Series also have a unique URL that creators can share on Facebook or on any other platform (i.e., website, Instagram, Twitter, etc.) for additional reach.
User Flow:
When a Series is clicked from a Page, News Feed Unit, or the newly launched Videos Tab, viewers will see a list-view of all the episodes that part of the Series. From there, they have the flexibility to navigate between season and episodes.
Series will be housed in the previously mentioned Videos Tab, which provides a central destination for viewers to browse a Page’s videos and find content that they are most interested in. Along with this, viewers have the option to upgrade their video notifications to get notified when specific videos are released.
Source: Facebook
Additionally, Facebook rolled out a new Bulk Uploader feature that allows creators to upload as many as 50 videos to a Page in a single action. Creators can not only schedule videos to be published at a specific time, but also can schedule multiple videos to be published at a regular cadence. For example, a user can upload multiple videos at once and then set it so that one is released every week.
Insights & Analysis:
Facebook’s new video updates come at a fitting time where video consumption on social media is high as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and people being glued to their mobile devices while they’re home.
The Series feature provides creators with the opportunity to create and share episodic or topical content and ultimately build their audience and increase discovery for their video content since videos that are part of a Series will have a higher chance of discovery than one-off videos. As with most social media platforms, creators want their content to be discovered easily, so Series and its higher ranking in the algorithm should be attractive to them.
When Facebook Watch first launched in 2017, it had a lot of momentum. However, that has somewhat died out. Series and the other video updates should give the platform a much-needed breath of fresh air. It will also encourage creators to share more content on the platform and potentially attract new viewers, which is a plus for Facebook as it tries to compete with YouTube to become the top of mind destination for video.
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SOURCE: Facebook
