Facebook is launching a premium video section called “Watch” late August. It will be a mix of a variety of premium channels including online news and pop culture, as well as short form series, reality shows, big budget shows, and user generated content. The video streaming will be both pre-recorded and live, with a live comment feed giving the broadcasters the opportunity to address comments as they stream. This is Facebook’s plan to enter the live streaming market and challenge the current VOD provider market share.
SVOD (streaming video on demand) leader, Netflix, reported that it has more non-US viewers than US viewers. The last quarter showed the shift from a primarily US viewership. Out of 5.2 million new subscribers, 4.14 million are non-US. This could mean that Netflix will start having more content in non-US regions coming soon. Regarding their DVD-by-mail services, the company continues to make 114 million USD, though this number is declining fast as people move to SVOD as their primary video delivery method.
While Netflix’s 100M subscriber base still has a moderate growth – mostly from outside of the US – Facebook, a social media community with over 2B active users is making some serious developments in SVOD, which could affect the SVOD leader, Netflix. Their introduction of “Watch” could introduce more people to VOD and increase their VOD market share easily.
Video streaming is not a new technology, but in the past year or two, it has really caught on, and it is obvious that video streaming and live streaming are going to remain popular trends in 2017. Price Waterhouse Cooper recently put out the results of a survey revealing upward trends in the streaming world.
