Facebook has been reported to have explored a new service for its users. The giant company intends to allow music videos to be directly played within its users' feed. As of now, music videos can only be played in Facebook when the videos come from video hosting sites such as Youtube and Vimeo. Facebook allows these sites to play videos directly on their platform or let people be redirected to the original sites. So if Facebook were able to finish the licensing deals it has been reported to work on right now, there is a big possibility that Youtube will lose millions of views. Facebook said that all videos uploaded on their platform will also be embeddable to other sites, just like Youtube. They are also working on accommodating virtual reality videos.
Youtube has been the major source for watching music videos and almost all kinds of videos. It is probably the first site that comes to mind when people want to watch newly released music videos. Facebook on the other hand is where most people usually get the information about the release of these videos. So if information and videos are already accessible in one platform, Youtube might experience a drastic decrease of users over the next years. People would no longer need to transfer from app to app or website to website when Facebook finally launches this new tactic.
Advertising may be the primary reason why Facebook would want to venture into direct video streaming. This marketing strategy will definitely hurt Youtube considering that Facebook caters to about 1.4 billion active monthly users.
As per the research held by ZenithOptimedia, online video streaming will continue to grow rapidly by 29% annually. They also conclude that in two years' time, the internet will outnumber televisions when it comes to advertising. This will both affect video streaming competitions and at the same time allow users to get more targeted ads from site to site.
