Taking a leaf out of Twitch and YouTube’s books, Facebook has launched some brand new publisher-centric features. From premiere videos to live polls, and to fan badges, the new features will give publishers more leeway when it comes to interacting with their fans and viewers. This features will improve the video experience on the platform.
First up, is video premieres. Social networking platforms have discovered a secret about audience engagement. By pre-recording a video and delaying its release, users can build up excitement and get more viewers on-board. This is not merely hearsay, as Twitch and YouTube have already released this feature and benefited from it. Facebook is eager to get on-board as well, and has finally released the feature, only a couple of months behind YouTube. The company has been testing this feature since the start of the year, and as such, we expect it to be well-rounded.
A number of different outlets actually jumped on-board and tested this feature with Facebook, including OWN, Sony, Australia’s Broadcaster Channel 7, BuzzFeed and creator Jimmy Zhang. And apparently, all of these companies received an increase in engagement — however, Facebook refrained from giving out an exact number. Interestingly, an extended preview of Aquaman will also be available through Facebook’s Premiere feature. Let’s see if the feature helps turn DC’s fortune around as well.
Next up, Facebook is giving creators a way to highlight their most loyal fans by displaying a badge next to their names. How do you become a top fan? Well, by spending time on the creator’s profile of course, including watching videos, commenting and otherwise engaging with the content available on the page. The question of course, is whether Facebook will let creators monetize the feature in the future, by selling these badges.
Finally, Facebook has launched video polls. These polls operate in a manner identical to your normal polls with a single difference – these polls will be superimposed on the video while it plays. While it’s a minor feature in comparison to Premiere and Fan badges, I am sure video creators will be able to leverage it in interesting ways.
