YouTube's actual competitor is Facebook

Facebook said in its earnings report this week that video views on its site are now reaching 4 billion per day. Six months ago, the number was 1 billion.

As my colleague Kurt Wagner puts it, “Going from 1 billion daily views to 4 billion in just six months is one of the reasons people are looking at Facebook as a de facto competitor to YouTube.”

Is there more data to support the above statement? Let's take a look at the playback data of the National Hockey League (NHL) playoff videos.

Last night Facebook pushed two hockey videos into my newsfeed. One was a replay of highlights from a New York Rangers game, interspersed with reactions from fans watching at home. As of this morning, the video had been viewed 240,000 times.

The same video on YouTube? About 1,200 views.

The second video was a clip of the game-winning goal uploaded by the Rangers. As of this morning, the video has been viewed 190,000 times on Facebook. However, the Rangers did not post the video on YouTube.

Admittedly, Facebook is pretty arbitrary when it comes to counting “views” (a video counts as long as it plays for three seconds). Facebook videos autoplay in the newsfeed, which obviously boosts these numbers.

But by posting the video to Facebook, the NHL and the Rangers can take advantage of its massive scale and targeted algorithms. Facebook uses this algorithm to push the video to different groups of people it thinks might like the video, such as fans of the team or sport. Facebook will also push the video to Facebook friends of users who like the video or team. In my case, it's the latter, but I still feel that the video is relevant to me and I don't mind seeing it in my news feed.

In contrast, YouTube's dissemination method relies on users opening the Rangers YouTube homepage or discovering embedded videos on other websites. This is a contest between the two methods of relying on push and relying on attraction, and video producers and disseminators have definitely noticed it.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.