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Zuckerberg: “Facebook Watch more mainstream in 2019”

February 1, 2019

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, has said he expects the Facebook Watch service to become “more mainstream” this year.

The social network’s ad-funded VoD service has so far failed to set the market alight and present any real competition to the likes of YouTube, but Zuckerberg believes this is set to change.

Speaking during Facebook’s Q4 and full year 2018 results call, Zuckerberg said that 400 million individuals use Facebook Watch every month and that viewers spend on average 20+ minutes watching content on it daily.

“This means we’re finding ways for video to grow outside of News Feed so it doesn’t displace the social interactions that people primarily come to our services for,” said Zuckerberg. “Right now, it looks like this is growing in a good direction. It’s still very early, we’re still growing quickly from a small base, but it’s one of the things that I’m excited about for this year.”

Zuckerberg said that a key focus for Facebook Watch is to create content that encourages two-way interactions between viewers and content creators. The company also seeks to grow the service as a standalone platform – not just something that Facebook users access through their news feeds.

Facebook’s revenue for the three months ending on December 31st was $16.9 billion dollars (€14.7bn), up 30 per cent on the $12.9 billion reported in the same period last year. Despite ongoing scrutiny over the social media giant’s business practices, profits were up 61 per cent to $6.8 billion dollars.

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