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Will Facebook Replace TV? CEO Mark Zuckerberg Hopes to Do Just That — And Here’s How He Plans to Do It

Feb 2, 2017  •  Post A Comment

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has long been thought to be setting his sights on competing with TV, but in his most public revelation to date of just what he has in mind in that area, he sounds as though he may be aiming even higher — as in BEING the new TV.

“On the company’s Q4 earnings call Wednesday … Zuckerberg talked about his vision for Facebook video,” Recode reports. “Zuckerberg wants people to think of Facebook when they have the thought, ‘I want to watch video content now,’ which sounds exactly like what you might use television or Netflix or HBO for today.”

The company has been shopping for TV-quality content, and it was reported just this week that Facebook has a video app in the works for Apple TV and other TV devices.

On Wednesday’s call, Zuckerberg explained his vision for the relatively new Facebook video tab, which resides inside the core Facebook app. Recode quotes him saying: “The goal that we have for the product experience is to make it so that when people want to watch videos or want to keep up to date with what’s going on with their favorite show, or what’s going on with a public figure that they want to follow, that they can come to Facebook and go to a place knowing that that’s going to show them all the content that they’re interested in. That’s a pretty different intent than why people come to Facebook today. … The experience is designed to deliver on that promise — [that] you want to watch videos, you want to keep up with the content that you watch episodically week over week. This is going to be the place where you go to do that.”

The report notes that Zuckerberg is working on a business model that would lure content creators to migrate to the site, such as including mid-roll ads.

Said Zuckerberg: “A lot of the best episodic content is professionally created, and those folks need to make a good amount of money in order to support their business model.”

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