Facebook Challenges YouTube Channels With New Features For Pages

Twitter’s not the only one Facebook is battling for control of news and content distribution. With Pages getting quieted down in the feed, Facebook wants to make its home for businesses less like a newspaper that come to you and more like TV channels you turn on. That’s why it’s YouTube that’s getting flattered by the social network with a new design for the Video section of Facebook Pages.

All businesses will soon be able to choose a featured video to be displayed extra-large with a live comment feed atop their Page, and cobble together playlists of more of their videos. This makes the Videos tabs of Pages look and feel a lot like YouTube Channels. TechCrunch spotted the new design and features on ABC News’ Page, and the company confirms it testing the format with a handful of Pages, and plans to roll it out to them all in the coming weeks.

Screen Shot 2014-12-23 at 3.25.55 PM

Facebook’s video product changes come alongside pushes on the monetization front. It just struck a deal with the NFL to show football game highlights on Facebook with post-roll ads for Verizon. Ad revenue will be split by the league and tech company.

Teaching 1.35 billion old dogs new tricks is no easy feat, but Facebook is trying to turn Pages into destinations that business link to and people voluntarily visit. It’s a plot that sees Facebook fighting on all fronts. It’s given local business Pages contact details, reviews, and OpenTable integrations like Yelp. It’s opened communications channels and curation of evergreen content to compete with Google indexed websites. Now it’s poking at YouTube and television.

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