TrendsTotal video, personal storytelling: Facebook’s future?

Leo Mauriello8 years ago7 min

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It’s a shocking news…a real surprise that invested the whole tech and economic world. Nicola Mendelsohn (a woman), Facebook EMEA vice President said: “In 5 years Facebook could become a video platform”. It is known that tech previsions are often hot air, we are talking about an economy that changes rapidly, 5 years are almost a geological era. But if it is true that an unwritten market rule is the secrecy of the goals, strategies and product development. Such a revelation means that there’s a path to go there already… a video and personal storytelling future.

Facebook: 8 billion views per year to fight against Snapchat

Data seems to support this strategy. From Facebook mobile, there are more than 100 million hours spent looking at videos, without counting that the overall number of views increased, from 1 to 8 billion viewers in a year. At the same time, the “text post” trend decreased.

But data need to be contextualized…from one side there is the enthusiasm for the new “live” feature, now available for anyone, not just celebrity only; from the other there is a fruition context in which, Snapchat in particular but also Periscope an Instagram keep growing, thanks to a faster and more immediate interaction.  Rumors has it that Zuckerberg is so enthusiast for videos that it is almost an obsession.

Social media and digital identity: through personal storytelling

Imagining such an extreme choice makes us wonder and think about a boring and less interactive version of Facebook. Truth is that the user doesn’t realize how technology transforms its fruition habits and the total sharing of his life. Think about how many video you used to make with your smartphone and how many you film now; how many GIF you used to share your emotions and how many you use now. Besides, a few years ago, how many apps you had installed in your smartphone that could help you film, edit and post product your video?

With the advent of social, our digital like enlarged the public space to the detriment of the private one, but now that the user is more conscious he can transform his identity on social networks, shaping it as he wants it. It is called Personal storytelling, and it is the ability to tell something about yourself that it’s halfway between fiction and realty. Where self-representation aspects are emphasized, critical elements for the digital identity are hidden. A good practice, often unconscious, but refined, where simple text posts and blogging appear limited. Au contraire, video and live streaming are more adequate since there is the need of telling something directly, no filter, as Snapchat does.

Facebook predicted the end of written words?

From the declarations made by Facebook leaders, some observers deducted that there is a total crisis of digital writing, saying that “Facebook is predicting the end of the written word”, but probably is an unfounded fear. From one side the performances od news contents and deep articles will get better, from another the ways of narrating are changing. Something that seems to drive words out the social dynamics, but not out of digital. The prevision for Facebook is that we’ll keep communicating with Chat apps, being informed, read and go deeper, sharing articles.. but to tell about our weekend, our passions and to tell the world our love for someone we’ll use more real-time interaction forms.

Leo Mauriello

I'm characterized by a great curiosity, that drives me to achieve important goals and new challenges. I'm a web and digital marketer mainly focused on digital strategy and social advertising with design, programming and digital analyst skills.

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