Facebook is now reporting that its Facebook Watch feature is getting 1.25 billion viewers every month, according to TechCrunch. That’s a huge growth from last year’s 720 million visitors reported in June 2019. It’s hard to say just how much of that growth has come from the spike in media consumption caused by COVID-19, and Facebook says there was definitely a surge at the beginning of lockdown, but the numbers don’t seem to be decreasing now that social distancing restrictions have lightened up.
Facebook Watch has secured its niche in the streaming world as a destination apart from the social media aspect of the core Facebook platform, focusing on Live and exclusive content, unlike a traditional video service. It’s an outlet for creators and viewers to build a watch community that promotes engagement, something critics originally doubted would survive back when it launched in 2018.
“The angle we’ve taken is to focus more on content that is around social topics to drive conversations,” said Facebook Product Lead Paresh Rajwat, saying that “the content we have is working.”
A good example of one of Facebook Watch’s high-performing shows is Red Table Talk with Jada Pinkett Smith. The show created waves last year as Jordyn Woods shared her side of the story to the Kardashian/Tristan Thompson cheating scandal, and then again this year when Pinkett-Smith and Will Smith used the platform to address personal relationship issues and other “entanglements.”
Rajwat said the company plans to continue making “more and more investment in showing people what they really are interested in.”
Facebook Watch recently rolled out a new music video licensing feature that allows viewers to discover and share official music videos from their favorite artists, like Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj, The Jonas Brothers, and more.
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