Facebook Live was launched to create spectacular hype. In a feature-massive BuzzFeed story, Mark Zuckerberg himself even made a special appearance, giving an overview of why the company is "streaming the whole live video."
Zuckerberg began by declaring that we are entering a "golden age of video," predicting that video content will dominate what we watch and share on Facebook for the next few years. He then hints at what makes Facebook Live different from Periscope, Snapchat, or many other live streaming options that came before: reach.
"If you're a public figure, the audience is unprecedented," Zuckerberg told BuzzFeed. "If you're Jimmy Fallon and want to go live, it's not really worth your time unless you can reach a similar audience to what you can reach on TV."
Since its launch in August 2015, Facebook Live has had a distinct advantage over other Facebook posts. When anyone you follow — a celebrity, brand, friend, or media company — starts a stream, you automatically get a notification, whether you like it or not.
The system has led to massive participation. When BuzzFeed posted a video of two people wrapping rubber bands around a watermelon until it exploded, the clip had more than 800,000 simultaneous viewers at its peak, reaching over 10 million in five days and ending with 320,000 comments. Big number! Everyone was very impressed. MarketingLand states that “ BuzzFeed's exploding watermelon video proves Facebook Live is no joke .”
But what if users could opt out of the annoyance of automatic notifications any time someone on their network posts a live stream? Last week, Facebook started rolling out that option, according to Digiday . No doubt many people will take advantage.
In a short time, publishers had maximum reach. Then, suddenly, the reach shrank. This story sounds familiar.
In the early 2010s, Facebook was a goldmine of organic access for brands. In 2012, organic reach started stable at 16 percent. Research 2015 set the average organic rate to 2.6%. Now, it's almost entirely pay-to-play.
A similar pattern emerged with Zynga, the game company that built a hugely successful business on Facebook only to see its reach. its strangled with a simple notification change.
And while there's no solid proof, traffic to external referrers for clips from YouTube and other video platforms seems to reduction shortly after Facebook introduced the native video player.
The message is clear: Brands and publishers can get their content out to large audiences, but only if they comply with Facebook's rules first.
Is Facebook's new opt-out feature just the first in a line of updates aimed at slowly reducing Live's annoying reach? Hard to say. But since history likes to repeat itself, don't be surprised if Facebook monetizes its cool new toy sooner rather than later.
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