After a year of live beta testing in the U.S., Facebook is taking its video service Facebook Watch global, said Facebook Head of Video Fidji Simo in a Facebook Newsroom blog post on Wednesday.

“Today we’re making Facebook Watch available everywhere — giving people around the world a new way to discover great videos and interact with friends, creators and other fans,” Simo wrote.

Facebook Watch offers a YouTube-like video experience where people can watch shows and then connect with friends, fans, family and even creators to discuss those shows. Currently, the service offers such programs as Red Table Talk starring Jada Pinkett Smith; SKAM Austin, a transmedia show about teenagers’ lives; a behind-the-scenes beauty show Huda Boss from Huda Kattan; and live Major League Baseball games.

Over the past year, more than 50 million people have watched at least one minute of video on Facebook Watch, reports the service, and total time spent watching videos in Watch has increased fourteen-fold since the beginning of the year.

Using Watch, viewers can discover new videos, catch up with creators and publishers, save videos to watch later and participate in videos by joining Watch Parties or engaging in a show with audience participation, like the service’s new trivia game show, Confetti.

As part of the service’s global expansion, Facebook also is expanding its Ad Breaks program, giving more partners more opportunities to earn money from their videos. These creators also will receive more insights, tools and best practices on how to promote and distribute these videos in Facebook’s Creator Studio.

According to Variety, the Ad Breaks service will launch officially Thursday in the U.K., Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, in addition to the U.S. It will launch in another 21 countries in September, including France, Germany, Spain, Argentina, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Thailand. More countries and languages will be added in the coming months.

Facebook Watch is still not a widely known or used feature on the social media platform with Diffusion Group reporting that half of adult users don’t know that it exists. Another one-quarter of users have heard of it but never used it, the study found. Facebook expects to spend $1 to $2 billion developing its video offerings in the next year.

READ MORE: Variety

Tags: facebook watch


  Save as PDF