Facebook Should 'Get Back to Baby Pictures and Sharing', Says YouTube CEO
YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki answers questions about aspiring video platform competitor Facebook during Recode's Code Media conference.
Facebook is reportedly trying to compete against YouTube in being a platform for independent video content. This issue was easily answered by YouTube chief executive Susan Wojcicki on Tuesday during Recode's Code Media conference in Huntington Beach, California.
"I mean you always have to take your competitors seriously, but you don't win by looking backwards and looking around," said Wojcicki when asked by Recode co-founder Kara Swisher what she was worried about with Facebook.
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Swisher, however, further probed Wojcicki to state what she was planning to do with Facebook's video ambitions. To this, Wojcicki replied, "I think they should focus on what they're focused on. I think they should get back to baby pictures and sharing."
Last September, Facebook announced the launching of Facebook Watch, a tab which features video content exclusively created for and uploaded on Facebook.
According to CNBC's report, Facebook has been planning to expand the tab into a platform opened to more individual creators. With this expansion, Facebook will be employing a shared ad revenue with the video creators. Sources have said that this move seemed to be a direct assault on YouTube, which has lately been criticized for making small YouTubers having a harder time to be able to monetize their content.
YouTube has announced that it would remove several YouTubers out of its ad revenue-sharing program because of the numerous scandals that faced the site last year. The largest video-sharing website in the world faced backlash against several issues, including ads that seemed to attract pedophile viewers, claims of LGBT censorship, and offensive videos that were uploaded to the site.
With that, the new rule of YouTube regarding the monetization of videos is that content creators must first generate 4,000 hours of watch time over a 12-month period and get at least a thousand subscribers. Complaints from YouTubers and advertisers alike arose upon hearing this.
