CCGL 9011 — Critical thinking (Why Facebook don’t copy Youtube’s partnership program?)
If we catalogue Facebook and Youtube, they are in criteria of ‘social network’. However, their nature are different. Facebook provides platform for us to share our daily life in terms of text, pictures, or video, and give us a chance to receive news-feed, while Youtube let us to share video and watch video. We can say the nature of Youtube is more monochromatic, yet, this system help the partnership program as it provides the fairness to the users. On the otherhand, it is much easier to for Facebook users to generate post and share things than making a good video. Therefore it is unfair to apply the program in the case of Facebook.
If Facebook want to have the similar partnership program, it is a problem to state a criteria of the program. Youtube gives money to youtubers depends on the view counts of their video. And the company has strict rules and measures, for example frozen view counts and adjustment to prevent inappropriate behaviors, such as repeated viewing (Youtube). Thus fairness can be maintained and the program can continued. On the other side, how can Facebook set its criteria if there is a partnership program? As said above, Facebook let people to share things in multi-media, therefore it is difficult to set a clear standard to define popularity in Facebook. For instance, if we use the original feature of facebook, ‘like’, it seems possible, however, in 2013, apple daily has discovered that company can buy like from Taobao. And there are 83 million fake account on Facebook (Zephoria, 2016). It means that the number of like cannot reflect the popularity of the Facebook user. Also, view count of post cannot be a criteria either. Because the post just randomly appear on the timeline according to our preference, we cannot choose a specific post to watch. And many people just swipe the post away without actually viewing it. Hence it is very difficult to count to view.
Even though Facebook can investigate a feasible partnership program, actually there is no need of this program. Youtube release this program since they want to encourage and attract public to make and upload video with quality hence there will be more viewers on Youtube. Therefore popularity of Youtube can be enhanced. But for Facebook, there is no need for it to attract more Facebook users. People use Facebook just because their friends are using. Therefore, partnership program is not needed to encourage Facebook users to generate post with quality since we will make post no matter it is our original purpose or not, for example giving like and sharing.
Reference:
1. Youtube Help. Frozen view count. Retrieved from https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2991785?hl=en&ref_topic=4355198
2. Apple Daily. (2013, 24 June). ¥1買10個like 港公司造假. Retrieved from http://hk.apple.nextmedia.com/news/art/20130624/18309954
3. Zephoria. (2016). The Top 20 Valuable Facebook Statistics — Updated April 2016. Retrieved from https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/
Chick Wing Kei, Vanessa (3035275446)
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