Facebook tried to sell video as its next big thing - but viewership is already declining
- Facebook users are watching fewer videos on the service, company officials reported Wednesday.
- The decline in viewing follows changes the company made to how it prioritizes certain kinds of content in its News Feed.
- News Feed video was previously a big emphasis for the company, but now it's switching gears to promote its Watch service.
It wasn't all that long ago that Facebook saw video as its next big thing - but those days may already be over.
As a result of the high-profile and widely-discussed changes the company has made to its service to prioritize certain kinds of content over others, users are watching less video on it, company representatives said Wednesday.
"We've […] observed some continued declines as we've done this, and in the passive consumption of video specifically," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a conference call with analysts following the company's first-quarter earnings report.
Zuckerberg and other Facebook officials declined to offer any specifics about how much video users are watching these days, or how that's changed, on the call. They also declined to discuss overall usage of the site.
But their comments indicate the decline in video watching comes on top of the overall usage decline Zuckerberg announced in January. He said then that changes the company had made to its service had resulted in users reducing the time they spent on it by about 50 million hours a day.
Since late last year, Facebook has been overhauling the algorithms underlying its News Feed to promote interactions with friends over posts from news publishers and other content producers and organizations. Publishers, in particular, have complained that they've seen a sharp dropping off in the amount of traffic they're seeing from Facebook following the changes.
But it's not just news articles that are taking a hit. So too are videos.
Facebook previously encouraged publishers to post videos
For the last several years, Facebook was encouraging individuals and content producers to post videos to its site, promising to promote them in the News Feed. Seeing an opportunity, several big-name publishing firms, including BuzzFeed and Mic, bet big on producing videos for Facebook, particularly live or short-form ones they thought would play well with its users. Now, some of those bets are looking suspect.
The decline in News Feed video watching is in line with what the company expected after it made its algorithm changes, Zuckerberg said.
"We think this is going in the direction of building a stronger community and a stronger business over the long term," he said.
Facebook hasn't abandoned video. But it's now focusing its efforts on its Watch service, which is kept separate from the News Feed. The company is aiming to offer a "very different" experience in Watch compared to what users could see in the News Feed or what they might find on YouTube, Zuckerberg said Wednesday.
Unlike News Feed videos, those on Watch are curated and are typically episodic. Additionally, Facebook is working on ways to tie them into its social network, such as by encouraging groups of users to watch them together.
Facebook likes how Watch is developing thus far, Zuckerberg said. But he declined to say how many users are tuning into into, saying only that "it's still pretty early overall" for the service.
The changes Facebook made to its algorithms came in the wake of growing criticism about its service and its influence on society. The company has taken a beating over charges that its service is actually harmful to its users' well being and that it has been repeatedly hijacked by propaganda artists to influence elections and divide societies.