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INSIGHTS
Facebook allows individual creators to publish videos on Facebook Watch, though, unlike YouTube, creators must first submit an application, and the company only accepts those creators whose content meet certain requirements.
Currently, many of the Facebook Watch's features-length shows are produced by Facebook, although the company hopes ultimately to shift to the entire third-party-created content.
Facebook Watch uses advertisements to produce revenue, in lieu of a subscription-based model like Netflix or Hulu.

Facebook Watch, Facebook's still-young video platform, is functionally an amalgamation of YouTube-style online videos and Netflix-style streaming television shows, though the company has also featured live sports and is seeking to offer subscriptions to paid-TV services like HBO. As yet, the service has not gained substantial popularity: Facebook reported 400 million monthly Watch users in December 2018, compared to about 1.8 billion on the platform's biggest competitor, YouTube. Still, Facebook Watch has some aspects that can be viewed as successes, such as Red Table Talk, a talk show hosted by Jada Pinkett Smith that has garnered over 4.4 million followers; and Ball in the Family, a reality-style show featuring the always-controversial LaVar Ball and his family, which has about 1.7 million followers. Below is a detailed overview of the Facebook Watch platform, including its use cases and features, insight into its total number of users, and examples of successes and failures of the platform.


FACEBOOK WATCH: OVERVIEW, USE CASES, AND FEATURES

 Facebook Watch is a video platform within the Facebook site. In terms of content, Watch consists of a combination of short, third-party-created videos like those found on YouTube, and longer shows more in the mold of traditional television, akin to those found on streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. The platform already features numerous original series, including a drama titled Five Points, a reality show titled Huda Boss, and an anthology series titled Sacred Lies. It also features some live sports, including one Major League Baseball (MLB) game a week (when it's in season) and "live LaLiga football matches in the Indian subcontinent." Like YouTube, and unlike Netflix or Hulu, Facebook Watch is free to access, and generates revenue via ads instead of subscriptions. Ultimately, Facebook hopes to turn Watch "into a service fully fed by third-party creators and partners," though its feature-length shows are primarily Facebook-funded at the moment.

Facebook Watch functions a lot like the News Feed on Facebook's social media home page, showcasing a "personal feed of shows, based on what [users'] friends watch," in addition to subscriptions. Currently, the bar for videos to be featured on the Watch platform is relatively high, compared to YouTube, where practically any user can post a video. On Watch, creators need to submit an application, and Facebook will only include their videos on the platform if they meet certain guidelines and show potential to garner substantial interest. Facebook has also been soliciting media companies to provide content for the platform, though interest in doing so has not yet reached that of streaming services like Netflix. Eventually, Facebook hopes to provide access to paid-TV subscriptions, such as HBO, via the Watch platform. It has also experimented with providing older television shows, such as cult classics Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, in an attempt to emulate Netflix-style content, though this endeavor has not yet been particularly successful.

Aside from the News Feed-style presentation, one other unique feature on Watch is "Watch Parties." Watch Parties emulate the style of live streams, in which a creator streams content live and viewers can discuss the content in real time, for previously-recorded content. Administrators of a Facebook group can select any publicly-viewable video content on Facebook, including (but not limited to) Watch content, and select it for a Watch Party, in which all members of the group can watch and comment on the video. This feature, along with the feed-style presentation based in part on friends' preferences, demonstrates Facebook's effort to make Watch a fundamentally social video platform. In December 2018, Facebook reported that, since the feature's launch last January, "there have been more than 12 million Watch Parties... and Watch Parties garner eight times more comments than regular videos in Groups."

FACEBOOK WATCH USERS
There are some data regarding the total number of users on Facebook Watch, though there is not, as yet, a breakdown of this data in terms of what users primarily use the service to do. In December 2018, Facebook released the most recent data on the number of Watch users to date. In this announcement, the company provided the following data points:

On a monthly basis, 400 million people globally use Watch for at least one minute
On a daily basis, 75 million people globally use Watch for at least one minute
On average, users "spend more than 20 minutes in Watch."

As CNET has noted, these figures imply that "Watch has roughly 25 million hours of viewership each day." This is only a fraction of what YouTube, its primary competitor, garners (about 1 billion viewership hours per day). Based solely on the relatively-strict bar for publishing one's own content on the platform, it is likely that only a small fraction of the platform's users uses it to publish their own content. However, after an extensive search of Facebook's press releases and investor relations materials, we could not find data released by Facebook itself regarding the number of content providers who currently publish on Watch, nor a breakdown of the content consumed by Watch users on the basis of genre, or any other basis. We could not find comparable data from a third-party source either, after an extensive news search on the topic.

FACEBOOK WATCH: SUCCESSES
On the whole, Facebook Watch has not been particularly successful; however, some of its content has generated substantial interest. In particular, two of its shows have garnered significant followings.

Red Table Talk: This talk show-style program, featuring star actress Jada Pinkett-Smith, debuted on May 7 of last year, and has since garnered over 4.4 million followers on its official Facebook page. The show, which often features discussions of "complex and emotional topics" like mental health, divorce, or race relations, demonstrates that Facebook Watch can be home to the kind of talk shows typically reserved for traditional television.
Ball In The Family: This reality TV-style program, featuring LaVar Ball and his family, has garnered about 1.7 million followers on its official Facebook page. Like Red Table Talk, Ball In The Family is a Facebook Watch original program in a style — reality TV — typically only found on traditional television, not Watch's online competitors. The show is effectively a documentary of the Ball family members' lives, in the vein of E!'s Keeping Up With the Kardashians.

FACEBOOK WATCH: FAILURES
In this section, in lieu of providing examples of individual users displeased with a particular segment of Facebook Watch, we opted to highlight two forms of content that failed to gain traction on the platform and were ultimately discontinued, or ultimately caused Facebook to pivot in another direction. This, more than any individual viewer's opinion, should serve to demonstrate where the platform as a whole has failed, and the direction in which the platform is headed.

Short-form lifestyle programming: At its inception in 2017, Facebook Watch featured numerous "short-form, unscripted lifestyle" programs, produced by "more than 30 partners including Attn, Mashable and Refinery29," but bankrolled by Facebook. Two Facebook sources described Facebook Watch content on a spectrum: on one end, feature-length content in the vein of Red Table Talk and Ball In The Family; on the other, short videos published on the program by the individual creators. The short-form programs, which initially accounted for a substantial portion of Watch's content, were described as in the middle of this spectrum, and failed to attract an audience, to such a degree that Facebook global creative strategy executive Ricky Van Veen called them "shows for nobody." The failure of these short-form programs to attract a substantial audience has evidently convinced Facebook to leave the creation of short videos to independent creators.
Content for young viewers: In November 2018, reports surfaced on Facebook pivoting away from content targeting young viewers. "In talks with at least three media companies, Facebook has hinted in wants Watch shows aimed at post-college Millennials around parenting age and older," according to CNBC. One company noted that, when being pitched shows, Facebook executives "responded most positively to talent in their 30s through 50s," indicating that acquiring shows with younger talent, to appeal to a younger audience, was not part of the company's focus. Additionally, Facebook reportedly specified that "any teen shows [on Watch] need to have adult themes that could attract older viewers." This pivot toward programming for older viewers came in a climate in which "only 36 percent of teens used Facebook at least once a month, down from 52 percent just two years ago," indicating that Facebook as a whole, including the Watch platform, has failed to attract the attention of young users.

CONCLUSION
 Facebook Watch, Facebook's attempt to create a competitor to YouTube and Netflix, functions like an amalgamation of the two with a Facebook New Feed-like presentation. Its feature-length shows are primarily bankrolled by Facebook currently, though the company hopes to shift to entirely third-party-created shows in the future. Its current viewership numbers are about 400 million per month, which pales in comparison to YouTube's 1.8 billion users per month, though Watch, launched in 2017, is still in its infancy. Red Table Talk and Ball In The Family demonstrate that Watch can successfully support talk show and reality TV-style programming, but, at the same time, the platform has failed to connect with young viewers, and its short-form video programs were ultimately failures.