Week 4(1) — Why doesn’t Facebook adopt Youtube partnership programme?

Youtube launched a partnership programme which is to award Youtubers money when their videos views and likes pass a certain threshold. However, Facebook does not adopt this programme. This reasons are as follows.

1. Difference in purposes: While Youtube is a platform for any anonymous people to disseminate their ideas by uploading videos, Facebook serves as social interaction and communication. It is a more private friends circle. Probably, we will add friends who we really know. In Facebook, with our friends present, we tend to share our personal feelings and we comment as people who see it are known people. Most people come to Facebook as they would like to stay connected with friends. Lauching such programme might have a risk that even a single post can be commercialized. We might lose an ad-free platform. People who come to get in touch with friends might be reluctant see a page with as much advert as Youtube, worrying that the uniqueness of Facebook would fade off.
2. Difficulties in assessing popularity to award money: As mentioned above, Facebook is a smaller private social circle which friends at my age usually have around 800 to 1000 friends. When I post something (be it a long critique or my current feeling in short), my audience/readers are not that many. I might be able to get 100 likes. But in Youtube, a interesting videos views can surge up to some millions with many thousands of likes. However, the numbers cannot be compared as it depends on the number of audience I have. In Youtube, it is unlimited(basically anyone in the world) while in Facebook, we have restricted my post only to be seen by my friends. It depends on the number of friends we have so it it hard to have a fair assessment on popularity.
3. Efforts devoted: Generally speaking, producing a video requires much more efforts. You need to record with camera, cut the tapes, adding effects etc. Generally you just have to type words and post it in Facebook. It sounds sensible to award Youtubers for their work to continuous production but it may not be the case in Facebook when much less effort is needed.
4. Fear of manipulation of content shown: Youtubers profit from having advertisement in their videos. If Facebook adopts this, it means that Facebook would have the interest to manipulate our attention on behalf of the advertiser. There is a fear that Facebook will always show the posts which the advertisers provides instead of according to our interest. When the platform cannot allow us to freely connected to others and the world but the content are preset, it is skeptical whether the users will stay.

T11-Chan Sum In (3035282671)