A year ago Facebook launched Watch, the social media organization’s answer to YouTube. It has taken some time for it to start rolling, only available internationally since August 2018. Facebook also launched IGTV over the summer to run alongside Watch on their sister social network Instagram. https://www.facebook.com/watch/
Facebook says Watch now has over 500 million monthly active users and 100 million daily active users. You may have noticed the icon with a play button as one of the features added to your FB mobile app and on the web-based site. Take note, however, a user only needs to watch one minute of video to be counted in the above stats. The initial curiosity may have driven up these impressive statistics. It will be interesting to follow to see if FB Watch catches on.
Facebook plans to monetize this new service and allow advertisers to take advantage of it, not unlike YouTube’s platform.