Facebook follows Twitch and YouTube with premieres, live polls and fan badges – TechCrunch



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Facebook announced today the world premiere of Premieres, its new interactive video format that allows creators to pre-record a video for fans, and then stream it to the viewing window of their choice, to make it a live event. This decision follows YouTube's introduction of a similar, similar Premier format a few months ago. In addition, Facebook claims to deploy interactive video surveys on more pages and make its Top Fans functionality available to all Facebook pages worldwide.

Like Twitch and YouTube, Facebook strives to provide its creators with a variety of tools to engage with their fans and viewers.

In particular, these companies found that allowing creators to postpone the broadcast of a pre-recorded video gave them the opportunity to create excitement for a live viewing event in their community, which could increase the number of viewers. viewers of the video. This benefits both creators, platforms and advertisers, as they all want to reach as many people as possible.

The videos on Facebook had already been tested some time before today's global launch, according to reports earlier this year.

The idea was widely popularized by Amazon's video game streaming site, Twitch, to capture the thrill of a live event, while allowing video creators to edit their video to make it more elegant. .

Facebook indicates that during the tests, a number of outlets have found greater involvement through the use of the feature, including OWN, which has been tested with Oprah Winfrey. SuperSoul Sunday; Sony, who announced the 10th season of the famous Indian game show – Kaun Banega Crorepati (Who wants to earn millions?); Australian Broadcaster Channel 7; BuzzFeed Unresolved; the Buffalo Bills; and the creator Jimmy Zhang.

He did not, however, mention specific increases in figures, percentages or averages.

The list of upcoming firsts also includes an in-depth look at Aquaman from WB, exclusive to Facebook this week.

Premiere's creative process involves the same video download tools that are already available, including monetization tools for ads and branded content.

With the first, the platforms can attract a wider audience for tools that were previously only offered to live broadcasters. For example, the creators of Twitch and YouTube can interact with fans by selling them specialized badges (emotes and badges Super Chat, respectively) along the way.

Facebook is now also moving towards this space.

In parallel to the launch of premieres, it deploys the best fans on all eligible Facebook pages. This feature, which began testing in March, showcases the creator's most loyal fans by displaying a badge next to their name.

For now, the best fans earn the badge by being active on the page – by watching the videos on the page, reacting, commenting on or sharing its content.

It seems likely, however, that this feature will be monetized in the future – in the same way that fans can buy badges on Twitch and YouTube to demonstrate their loyalty. But Facebook has not announced any plans – and in fact, it does not intend to do so. (We will see.)

Once tagged "Top Fan", comments will be posted on any type of message or video, including the first ones.

Any page with more than 10,000 subscribers can activate the best fans using the video template, then enable the best fan badges in the page settings.

Video polls are coming in today too, after testing for functionality earlier this year. The testers so far included Anderson Cooper Full Circle; Tasted and ViruSs, creator of games.

Live polls are now available for all pages via Facebook's Live API and Live Publishing Tool. Soon, they will offer a video on demand.

These changes come at a time when video is becoming increasingly important to the social network. A month ago, it launched its Facebook Watch video portal around the world, while continuing its attempts to convince video creators to leave YouTube and Twitch's game broadcasters on its social networking platform.

She also recently acquired Vidpresso's team and tools to make videos more interactive. At that time, he said that his Facebook Live videos had already been viewed by 3.5 billion shows and had received 6 times more interactions than traditional videos. These numbers are critical to understanding why Facebook and its rivals are trying to give the impression that pre-recorded videos look like a live event.

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