One Billion Videos Per Day Watched by Facebook users

Facebook reveals that since June of this year its users have watched over 1 billion videos each day proving that the site’s efforts to make video content an essential component of the users News Feed is advancing rapidly. Video views have doubled between May and July and nearly 65% of daily views are from mobile devices.

View Counts & Related Videos Included in New Facebook Features

This last year, users have seen a substantial amount of improvements to the way video content is circulated throughout Facebook. For example, the launch of the auto-play video and an adjustment of the algorithm that yields more relevant results based on videos the user has liked or viewed in the past.

Now a new rival to YouTube, Facebook is stepping up with its video analytics by providing companies and marketers with data displaying the amount of views a video has. A feature set to go live within the next few days allows view counts to be public allowing viewers to see the popularity of the video. Another feature set to release, but in beta for mobile devices, will provide related videos based on the content the user watched.

• Facebook’s Media Partners Request View Count Feature

According to Variety, Facebook’s most important media partners such as Parkwood Entertainment, owned by Beyonce, were responsible for the initial request of the view count feature. Parkwood entertainment wanted the ability to track the views of the “50 Shades of Grey” trailer which features a beautifully remixed version of the singer’s top hit “Crazy in Love”.

On Friday September 5th the “50 Shades of Grey” trailer was posted to Facebook and YouTube. In a mere 4 hours the video had 2.4 million Facebook views while YouTube only had a few thousand within the same time frame. But why such a vast difference in views? The singer has 6.5 million Facebook fans that were introduced to the clip through their News Feed where as YouTubers would have needed a two step process to share the clip with other networks. Reaching fans in the tens of millions of both Beyonce and the movie, Facebook made it simple for users to view and share the clip.

As you may already know, YouTube has been administering view stats for years. While it’s not the most reliable matrix, views are the simplest way to determine popularity of a video. With a combination of likes, comments, and now view counts, it is no doubt that Facebook users will quickly begin utilizing this new feature and agree or disagree with the general consensus.