The Pivot To Video Fails Everyone

Morning Report: Even Facebook is over the pivot to video.

Just over a month ago, Crunchbase News wrote about recent digital publishing headlines. At that period, yet another publishing group was cutting staff after a pivot to video, and all sorts of New Era giants were set to miss their revenue targets.

It wasn’t pretty. The pivot to video had turned out to be even less than a silver bullet.

And then, in recent days, Facebook has made it explicit that the company will dramatically lessen not only brand impact through Pages, but it will also limit how often its users see public video content. For publishers dependent on Facebook to find and reach readers, the changes sound rough.

Wired has an interview with a Facebook exec that discussing the changes, short clips of which make the situation plain. Asked to tell the magazine about the news, Facebook’s Adam Mosseri said, among other things (emphasis added):

There will be less video. Video is an important part of the ecosystem. It’s been consistently growing. But it’s more passive in nature. There’s less conversation on videos, particularly public videos.

There will be less content directly from (professional) Pages. Page content will still be an important part of the ecosystem, but it will shift a little bit. Content that is shared and talked about between friends will grow, and content that’s directly consumed from Pages directly will shrink slightly.

That’s a double hit for many.

Facebook is probably doing right by its product in a long-term sense, trading short-run KPIs for the service being more enjoyable to use—perhaps keeping users who were thinking of leaving. Publishers come up as collateral damage in the mix, which we really only care about due to the fragile state of media. How many people will lose their jobs when Facebook-fed traffic to digital media slips? I bet the answer isn’t no one.

Publishing entities that were overly-Facebook dependent are in the most trouble. Publications with a real readership will take a haircut. The Verge’s Casey Newton had the correct take on that contrast:

But laughing at the weaker publications who will take the heavier hand isn’t really that much fun. At least it isn’t more than a gallows sort of humor that is calorie-free to boot.

Here are two useful actions you can take in the meantime: subscribe to at least one major paper online, and find a smaller outlet that takes donations or relies on subscriptions (The Information, Think Progress, Commentary, etc.). Then you will at least be helping prevent whatever poor choice follows the failed pivot to video.

From The Crunchbase Daily:

• The Crunchbase Daily is off today, along with Crunchbase itself in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.