The new Facebook Watch Tab that offers a wide range of shows for all users

Facebook mobile users would soon see a new Watch tab that offers a wide array of shows. It’s becoming the destination for viewers of programs. This of course makes FB a media company. However, qualifying for the label is not just a matter of pedants but also more on semantics, about the ambition of Facebook, its social obligations and the future of media.

MAKING THE FACEBOOK EXPERIENCE MUCH STICKIER

Facebook watch is all about making the experience much stickier, thus making users want to spend more and more time in the Facebook home. Today, with over two billion users, the social media giant wants to do much more in order to retain the interest of people who are logged in. Videos with high quality will do this, as will the eventual move of the company into live sports that has long been rumored but has not materialized yet. Power brings about responsibility and there have been instances when FB appeared uncomfortable with its social obligations. For example on the issue of fake news, despite having hundreds of thousands of new moderators, the company is determined not be an arbiter on what’s true or what’s false, preferring the user community to make the judgments.

FACEBOOK WATCH WILL ACCELERATE THE SHIFT TO AUDIENCE TREND

Across media, power shifts to audiences. The idea of editors to determine what users could read or for commissioners to determine what users will watch is getting weak. Schedules have become obsolete, albeit gradually. The Facebook watch hastens the trend. With a user base that’s massively larger than Netflix and YouTube combined, the social interactions performed when logged on to FB is recorded meticulously by the algorithms of the social network. This of course helps drive content promotion and distribution.

In any Facebook mobile application, convenience is king. The social network makes it more convenient to enjoy viewing experiences with no need to leave the platform. Mark Zuckerberg justifiably argues that this is a way to transfer more power to users. Watching video on FB has an amazing power of connecting people, foster community and spark and inspire conversation. On the social network, videos are discovered via friends and bring together communities. As more and more people enjoy the experience, they like the serendipity of discovering news on the News Feed. However, they also want a dedicated area where they could go to for watching videos.

THE VIDEO TAB IN THE UNITED STATES

Last year the Video Tab was launched in the United States, which offered a predictable space to find Facebook videos. Now, the company wants to make it even easier to catch up on shows. The new Watch is a new platform for shows. It would be available on desktop, mobile, laptop and in TV applications. Shows are made of episode, recorded or live and follow a storyline or theme. To help people keep up with the shows they follow, it has a watch list so they will not miss out on the latest episodes. Watch is personalized to help discover new shows that are organized on what friends and communities are viewing. For instance, there are sections such as ‘most talked about’ that includes shows wherein a lot of people used the Haha reaction. There is also the ‘what friends are watching’ that helps connect with friends regarding shows that they are following as well. In FB Live, people’s reactions and comments to a video often are much a part of the experience as the video itself. So when watching a show, one could see comments and connect with friends as well as other viewers while viewing or join in a dedicated FB Group for the show.

THE PLATFORM FOR SHOWS

Watch is the platform for all publishers and creators to look for an audience, create a community of passionate fans and also earn for their work. A wide range of FB shows could be successful, especially the following:

1. Shows that engage the fans and the community. Nas Daily publishes a daily show making videos together with fans all over the world. The Watchlist makes it easy for fans to catch a new episode daily.

2. Live shows that directly connect with fans. A New York Times bestselling author, Gabby Bernstein, life coach and motivational speaker, users a mix of live and recorded episodes for connecting with fans as well as answer queries in real time.

3. Live events which bring communities together. Major League Baseball broadcasts a game on Facebook every week, letting people view live baseball while connecting with friends as well as fellow platform fans.

4. Shows following a narrative arch or have a consistent theme. The show Tastemade’s Kitchen Little is a funny one about children who watch a how-to recipe video and then instruct professional chefs on how to make it. Every episode features a new chef, a new kid and a new recipe. The food, unsurprisingly does not always turn out as expected.

Watch would be home to a range of shows, from reality, comedy, to live sports. It’s exciting to see how publishers and creators use shows for connecting with fans and community.

Facebook inserts into politics with tools useful for elected officials

Among the most popular media websites, Facebook is ranking high. This year, it launched several features, which make it easier for people to reach government representatives on the social network, which include ‘Town Hall’. Related integrations with News Feed enables sharing representatives contact information in posts.

FACEBOOK IS EXPANDING ON FEATURES FOR ELECTED OFFICIALS

These days, Facebook is expanding on initiatives designed for elected officials. The new tools help government officials reach their constituents and to understand which issues that their constituents care the most as well. In particular, FB, one of the top social media sites is rolling out three new features, namely, constituent badges, insights and district targeting. The primary objective of the new features is to help politicians connect with constituents in their district better. However, at a deeper level, FB makes it easier than ever for the officials to acquire insight into the behaviors and thoughts that drive their communities, transform the social network into a gold mine of data to predict voter behavior as well as all kinds of other relevant political findings. Moreover, the new looks are an expansion of the existing Town Hall feature, which was first introduced in March. It is a way for users to connect and reach out to local representatives better through FB. It is all part of the wider effort to help make the social media site a tool for enhancing civic discourse.

The first feature is the Constituent badges. A new, opt-in feature which allow FB users to identify themselves as living in the district where the elected official represents. The social media giant determines if someone is a constituent or otherwise based on the address provided in Town Hall or being part of the process that’s used to turn on badges. Although anyone pretend to be a constituent and enter a fake address, FB has put controls in place for limiting the bad actors. Users could only be a verified constituent based on a single address at a time. Moreover, if a person changes the address, the badge is removed from prior posts. Also, FB limits the amount of time that an address could be changed. The badges is to make it easier for officials to find out which questions, comments and concerns are shared by the people that they actually represent. Whether they will treat the sentiments with the same degree of relevance or not as they would an email, letter or phone call remains to be seen. Users would be prompted to turn on constituent badges when they make a comment or like posts by their representatives via a unit, which appears on the page. User alternately could go to the Town Hall section to turn on the badge themselves. As soon as enabled, the badges would appear anytime someone comments on shared content by their own reps.

The second feature is the Constituent insights. It’s designed to help officials find out which local news content and stories are popular in their area so they could share their ideas and thoughts on these matters. This would be available via a new Page Insight feature, which is available to Page admins that include a section that could be scrolled horizontally wherein locally trending stories and news appear. The elected officials could click a link to post the story to their FB page, together with their thoughts about it. In addition, constituents could browse through the same stories on a new Community tab on the FB page of the official.

The third feature is the District Targeting feature, which arguably is the most notable. The feature provides elected officials a means of gathering feedback from constituents effectively and directly via Facebook, using posts or polls targeted only towards those actually living in their specific district. This means that the government official could post to the social media site to ask for constituents’ feedback regarding an issue. These posts would be viewable to those who are living in their district only. Definitely, this also means that the official will be taking an active and even proactive role when it comes to engaging with the constituent base and their community, instead of waiting for constituents to proceed to their office with their thoughts, which often is the case nowadays.

Today, rather than seeing faces and names of potential constituents, officials elected to their posts could see a special badge designating a user as someone living in their district. The features will cut down those pretending to be in a district that they really do not belong into. All of the features combined offer a very powerful tool for politicians to start engaging more deeply with the people, as well as learning from them. Overall, the Town Hall combination with the new features targeted towards government officials represent Facebook’s growing effort to be move involved in the political process as well as the dialog that surrounds policy issues.

Facebook has given its marketplace a colorful redesign with visual overhaul

Facebook provides it Marketplace feature with a colorful redesign, providing it a bit of visual overhaul with colorful new icons and enhanced search and filtering features. First launched in October 2016, the Craigslist competitor is a major entry point of Facebook into local commerce. These days, the marketplace sits in a dedicated tab at the bottom of the application of Facebook application, wherein its ever-present red barge pressures one to click through.

 CHANGES WITH A COLORFUL REDESIGN

The changes in the Facebook account are more on making the marketplace easier to use, with a scrollable list of item categories, which look as rounded, candy-colored icons. During launch, the navigational elements of the marketplace were much simpler. Four buttons on the top encourage users to take a photo of an item to sell tap to categories, search or access their own postings easily. Same features are still available post-redesign, except that nowadays, delving into a single category just takes a single tap rather than two. The idea is to boost better discovery, since most people come to the marketplace with a goal in mind. They require a piece of furniture or appliance or want to browse for deals on items that are second-hand, such as purses, clothing, baby products or probably a used smart phone. With added individual category icons, one could now rapidly jump into a specific section. Additionally, in the front of the list, there is now a handy icon to find nearby garage sales.

Any section could be filtered by price and location to narrow the returned listings, with or without an accompanying keyword search. When browsing a given section, one could also tap the filtering options to switch to another category. These are categorized under high-level labels such as Entertainment, Home, Clothing and Accessories, Electronics, Family, Hobbies, Bicycles, Vehicles and Classified. Under each is a selection of sub-categories one could opt to narrow searches. For instance, under Electronics one could choose from Electronics & Computers or Mobile Phones. The Classifieds section feature has the Garage Sales and Housing Ads as well, both push FB further into Craigslist territory. Now, these sections too sport more colorful icons for maintaining consistency with the new look of the Marketplace. The features are available on Facebook’s desktop version and in mobile too but in a different layout.

Facebook has confirmed the launch of the redesign and states that it is now appearing to everyone with the Marketplace feature. The colorful redesign has bigger images, cleaner look and vibrant colors. The first difference noticeable is how the content within the News Feed is going to be more vibrant and bigger. The articles, photos, videos, maps, events and more all would stand out more and will be emphasized more. Another change you’ll see is more content feeds to choose from. This is in an effort to give us more control over the type of content we see in our News Feed. The feeds enable viewing certain kinds of content deemed most important, such as updates from all friends, photos, friends, and games and certain lists of brands or people followed.

FB’s marketplace could be used for listing what one has and what one wants within networks, group of friends or other networks. Beyond the use for classified listings, one could also use Marketplace to have a sense of everything desired or available within the networks. The listings in the Marketplace could be anything, from DVDs and books that are not needed anymore a dream job to land or special requirements. A listing could also be created for basically anything and one could easily keep track of connections to the others in the Marketplace. This means that next time one wants to purchase something, he or she could ask a mutual friend of the seller if she is the kind to scratch CS or allow a cat to have free reign over the sofa. As always one has thorough control over the privacy and the privacy of the listings as well.

The Marketplace of Facebook is a convenient destination for discovering, buying and selling items with people in the community. It makes it easy to look for new things one loves, find new homes for the things no longer used. Marketplace opens with new pictures of items, which people nearby have listed for sale. To find something in particular, search at the top and filter results by category, location or price. One could browse what is available in the different categories. The built-in location tool could be used to adjust the region that one is looking for or switch to another city altogether. FB wants to get into the local buying and selling game with the Marketplace. Furthermore, the colorful redesign of the feature makes it even more effective and simplifies the buying and selling process.