Facebook ‘Watch’ goes global; Instagram adds verifications | Public Relation

Influencers are getting an even bigger platform—and Facebook wants a bigger
share of the creator community.

Facebook’s on-demand video offering, called “Watch,” launched last year,
but now the service is being rolled out worldwide.

Engadget reported:

Facebook launched Watch
last year
in the US as a platform for episodic TV content, and now it’s going
international. The social media company announced that the VOD service will
be “available everywhere” as of now, giving creators around the world an
alternative to YouTube. “We are supporting publishers and creators globally
in two critical areas: helping them to make money from their videos on
Facebook and better understand how their content is performing,” said
Facebook in a statement.

Shows in the US that have taken off include

Red Table Talk

with Jada Pinkett Smith (2.9 million followers) and beauty industry mogul
Huda Kattan’s Huda Boss, along with
PGA Tour
and
Major League Baseball
sports coverage. Facebook said that up to 50 million people tune in to
Watch for at least a minute per month, though you should take its video
numbers with a
grain of salt. Upcoming shows will feature
Cristiano Ronaldo
and
Catherine Zeta Jones.

Facebook hopes to offer a more social viewing experience to compete with
other video platforms, including YouTube.

Reuters reported:

Facebook’s Head of Video Fidji Simo said Watch was gaining real momentum in
a crowded marketplace because it was built on the notion that watching
videos could be a social activity.

“Every month more than 50 million people in the U.S. come to watch videos
for at least a minute on Watch, and total time spent watching video on
Facebook Watch has increased by 14 times since the start of 2018,” she told
reporters.

Facebook doesn’t have a great track record of paying video creators and publishers, but creators can earn revenue from their “Watch” channel.

[RELATED: Overcome your biggest challenges in internal comms, PR and social media]

Reuters
reported:

Ad revenue will be split 55 percent for the content creator and 45 percent
for Facebook, the same ratio as in the United States, Simo said.

Publishers need to have created three-minute videos that have generated
more than 30,000 one-minute views in total over the past two months and
must have 10,000 followers to participate in Ad Breaks, Facebook said.

Simo said Facebook was working on a variety of other options for creators
to make money, such as branded content and the ability for fans to directly
support their favorite creators through subscriptions.

Instagram offers a ‘verified’ badge

Social media users may be more familiar with the
controversial Twitter verified badge, but Instagram has offered a similar feature—albeit in much smaller
circulation.

TechCrunch reported:

On Instagram, blue check marks are fairly rare, even among pretty big
brands and public figures. Getting verified on the platform has long been
the stuff of legend — no one quite knows what goes on behind the scenes but
knowing a guy doesn’t hurt. Remarkably, there’s even a
super sketchy black market
where people charge thousands of bucks to hook you up with verified status
(or more likely to just rip you off). The whole thing has always been kind
of mysterious, with little blue checks quietly sprinkled around in no
discernible pattern.

It looks like those days are over. While it’s too early to tell if
Instagram will be handing out more verified badges to users, they’ve at
least made the process much more transparent. Now, any user can request to
be verified with a few steps. As a note: In our testing, the option to
request verification is live now in iOS but hasn’t yet popped up in the
updated Android app.

Instagram wants its version of the little blue badge to be a way of
verifying your interaction with a major celebrity or global brand. For
Instagrammers who believe they warrant the classification, TechCrunch outlines these next steps:

1. Request verification: This option is found within your
settings menu on the app.

2. Provide documentation: Instagram accepts official
government IDs like passports or driver’s licenses. For companies, you can
use a tax filing or articles of incorporation.

3. Wait for a reply: If you are rejected you can reapply
in 30 days.

With great power comes great responsibility—and in Instagram’s eyes, a
verified account should be beyond reproach.

Instagram says the requirements for a verified account include being
authentic, unique, complete and notable. Being authentic is as simple as
representing a real person or entity. Being complete means having filled
out every part of your account profile.

Some believe Instagram’s verified system to be preferable to Twitter’s.

The Verge reported:

The company has verified that you are who you say you are; that you only
have one account; and that the account is “notable” in some way. What does
that mean? The Help Center lays it out: “Currently, only Instagram accounts
that have a high likelihood of being impersonated have verified badges.”

The policy isn’t democratic in the sense of Dorsey’s spring proclamation
that someday everyone could have a badge on Twitter. But it does open the
door to more people getting badges on Instagram, and doing its part to
improve trust on the service.

How will these changes affect your social media strategy, PR Daily
readers?

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