Facebook Videos Going Viral
Many companies/brands used to go to YouTube as a way of advertisement in hopes for what they are selling to go viral. However, with the rise of video on Facebook, this hasn’t necessarily been the case as of late. Instead, companies have been uploading their videos on Facebook in hopes for their video to become viral on that platform. The article linked states that companies used to do all of their online video advertising through YouTube, but now, many brands/companies are either putting their videos onto Facebook and YouTube or Facebook alone.
“Why would companies do this?” someone might ask knowing that YouTube has worked so well in the past. That could simply be answered with just with the “share” feature on Facebook video. In the past, many videos go viral just from someone copy and pasting a link from YouTube onto Facebook and then that link would have to be passed around in order for the video to go viral. Now, Facebook has made it so you don’t need to pass around this link, and instead you can have an uploaded video on Facebook easily shareable. All you do is click the “share” button and then it sends out to all of your friends. The reason why this is so effective is because all of the potential networks that the video reaches. This network reaches all nodes represented by people on Facebook with their edges represented by friendship which could either be strong or weak. When one person shares the video, this video is being sent out to a network of both strong and weak ties of that person’s friends on Facebook. That first person could potentially send this video out to hundreds of nodes in their network. If one node, or friend, shares the video again, they reach tons of other nodes in their personal network. If nodes keep on sharing and sharing, then millions of people could potentially be reached which is exactly what companies and brands want.
Lately, it’s even been shown that because of the simplicity of just sharing the video on Facebook, and how easy it is to view, the view could has even started to surpass YouTube. I am not all that astonished, but I do wonder if YouTube will suffer as a result of not as many views on their website or not as many videos going viral.
Source: http://adage.com/article/breyers-facebook-prove-brands-dont-need-youtube-go-viral-video-chart/300161/