Facebook is reportedly venturing toward developing a new TV app for set top boxes, which will include Apple TV.
Why are they doing this? Apparently because they need more ad revenue. According to The Wall Street Journal, “the social-media giant (Facebook) said last November that its main source of revenue, the news feed, was running out of room for more ads.”
According to the same report, video ads make more revenue than the standard text or image ads that are currently being utilized by Facebook. It is also estimated that the US TV market is a $70 billion market, and thus it is not surprising that the social media company is eager to tap into those earnings.
What is more interesting, though, is that Facebook plans to include more than just the normal user-generated content that we see on the site. They’ll be making the leap to hosting and even creating original premium content!
They are said to be working on acquiring materials from major studios. But, of course, it is more exciting to think about original content.
What will they produce first? Will it be a political drama like Netflix’s House of Cards or alternative histories like Amazon’s Man in the High Castle? Will they be producing documentaries or even magazine shows? Will there be news segments?
These, of course, are important questions, especially since Facebook has a huge global reach. Note how much influence the social media giant played in global politics when it was not even strictly a media content producer.
With Facebook venturing toward making its own content, how will this affect our cultural and political landscape? Does this give too much power to Mark Zuckerberg?
I guess we’ll find out when it rolls out. In the meantime, we’ll just enjoy our friends’ vacation and pet videos.
