Facebook to Curate Original Content with Watch

The world’s largest social network just entered the original content space in a unique way. Given the right set of circumstances, brands could have fun with a large audience at scale by leveraging Facebook’s latest product: Watch.

In early August, the now public behemoth out of Menlo Park cryptically announced a new product dubbed Watch. Per the press release, this expansion would provide “a new platform for shows on Facebook.” Shows, as defined by Facebook in this case, are “made up of episodes — live or recorded — and follow a theme or storyline. To help you keep up with the shows you follow, Watch has a Watchlist so you never miss out on the latest episodes.” The kicker? Some of these will air at a certain time each week like traditional television.

With a new function that sounds eerily similar to the offspring of YouTube and Netflix, or any of the other handful of streaming services now available, Facebook is looking to differentiate by leveraging a unique to-market strategy while splicing features from other popular mediums like Twitter and premium cable. From a producer perspective, “Zuck & co.” are requiring content creators to apply (for now, anyway). From a consumer perspective, imagine watching your favorite original content while chatting about the show as it broadcasts, re: Facebook Live. Or it could potentially be more familiar, reminiscent of Twitter’s live streams of NFL games or eSports tournaments, but with the feel of popular, polished YouTubers. A dichotomy will exist when Facebook dips into pro sports, which has been exemplified by its fledgling MLB partnership: 20 games will be broadcasted “free” through Watch.

Mind you, Facebook Watch is not designed to compete with the likes of HBO or Hulu or even Sunday Ticket. Instead, Forbes quoted it best:

“The more overarching question is who will win as the cultural benchmark or the financial goliath? Facebook plans to churn out a range of content that has broader appeal and will target users for ad revenue. Netflix is more interested in quality programming that ushers in waves of subscribers who yearn for their content. “ - Benton Olivares, writer at Revolution Pictures.

However, that’s not to say that content supplemented by Facebook’s vast wallet won’t exist. As noted in their original press release:

To help inspire creators and seed the ecosystem, we’ve also funded some shows that are examples of community-oriented and episodic video series. For example, Returning the Favor is a series hosted by Mike Rowe where he finds people doing something extraordinary for their community, tells the world about it, and in turn does something extraordinary for them. 

Ball in the Family is another scintillating example of this. BitF follows the fairly notorious Ball family as they continue to conquest the sport of basketball and immediately placed Watch toe-to-toe with other premium content networks.

Facebook Watch’s lower barrier to entry, prestige in presentation and overall social inclination led to a large rollout on September 4 when the tab appeared in all domestic users’ dashboards.

Reviews varied, as the large slate of content also included less-than-premium shows akin to rival YouTube. With publications like Techcrunch throwing around labels like “lackluster,” Facebook might have an uphill battle as it tries to rise up over the mountain of reality shows that have surged at launch. Although, contained within the same article, signs of life do exist in the form of productions like Lost Memories from independent filmmaker Francois Ferracci in a morbidly holographic future.

Side bar: it’s not immediately obvious how to search inside of Watch. Use the global search bar, navigate over to the Videos tab and shows will be labeled accordingly with SHOW under a new “Episodes” header. Otherwise you can fall into a rabbit hole!

The most interesting possible future for Facebook Watch includes the playground it provides for brands and personalities. Sponsored shows are coming. Not in the form that one would assume from a pay-to-play channel like this, but as publishers outfitted with production equipment and a knack for creating good content hop on the hype train and offer co-branded episodic videos.

Watch provides a pedestal for highly engaging content series to evolve. Picture your favorite Tasty videos with a story arc, highlighting certain kitchen products or produce companies, laden with promos from everyone’s favorite celebrity chefs and the restaurants they’ve just opened or the books they just published.

Business Insider is one of the trendsetters that have adopted Watch out of the gate via its lifestyle brand, Insider. Along with Refinery29, National Geographic, Attn and Tastemade, Insider has come roaring onto the scene with at least two shows of their own.

Beyond publishers, or engaging with a publisher to co-create a show, a brand that begins to evaluate whether Watch makes sense to their particular content mix from an owned perspective needs to ask themselves the following questions:

1. What is the business objective?
2. What is the communication objective?
3. What is the video strategy that complements a show?
4. How is success being measured?
5. Is there bandwidth to produce, and likely continue producing, episodic content?

If the answers to these make sense, and lead to a narrative with purpose, venture out! And always remember: test, iterate, optimize.