Video is the core entertainment medium of the web. Platforms like YouTube, Twitch, Netflix and more deliver millions of hours of videos to hungry consumers every day, and those deliveries will only intensify as video games move increasingly to streaming models.

Yet, delivering all of that content remains an expensive and challenging endeavor. The largest platforms employ hundreds of video encoding specialist engineers to optimize the transcoding and delivery costs of their product, while also paying millions either for their own cloud infrastructure or to AWS or Google Cloud. Yet, few affordable options exist for startups — such as live streaming apps like Houseparty (which was bought last week by Epic Games) — or even for large enterprises with streaming needs but without access to specialized hardware.

That’s where Livepeer comes in. The brainchild of multi-time founder duo Doug Petkanics and Eric Tang, Livepeer offers a decentralized platform for video encoding centered on the Ethereum network. Its early success has attracted the attention of media VCs, and the company announced today that it has raised an $8 million Series A venture capital round led by Northzone. Houseparty founder Ben Rubin joined the round as well, and video infrastructure behemoth Brightcove’s former CEO David Mendels also joined as an advisor to the company.

Livepeer is essentially a marketplace between encoding providers (the supply side) and app developers who need video streaming services (the demand side). Today, developers can integrate Livepeer inside of their apps by downloading the node, running the Livepeer media server, and funding their account with Ethereum. So far, more than 100 events have streamed their videos using the platform, although Petkanics admits that they have been an “early-adopter, philosophically-aligned crowd.”

At this point in the life cycle of crypto and blockchain, it can be easy to be skeptical of next-generation technologies built on these platforms. But Petkanics believes there is a unique opportunity in video that connects well with this market.

In addition to the absolutely stupendous increase in video streaming across the web, there is a unique compute market for encoding: the millions of GPUs bought by crypto miners over the past few years. Those GPUs calculate the hashes required to make money in crypto, but in many cases according to Petkanics, leave idle the other processing units on those chips that actually handle video encoding. Livepeer sees an opportunity — at least early in the company’s growth cycle — to essentially bootstrap on top of that excess capacity for processing power.

Right now, Petkanics told me that the company has more than 30 providers of compute power on the platform, and that the “supply side of the network is running, and it is the last thing that keeps me up at night.”

That excess compute power is driving significantly lower prices for encoding. Petkanics said that Livepeer is ten times cheaper than incumbent streaming providers, and with additional development work in the coming years, he believes he can further improve that cost advantage. Today, he said that the platform can handle two streams for roughly 70 cents per day, compared to $3 per stream per hour of incumbents (a number that surely varies across companies with different levels of negotiation leverage).

Having compute power is one thing — getting customers to use it is another. The goal of the Series A funding, along with the company’s new Pilot Partner Program, is to begin implementing applications outside of the crypto-fans and enter the enterprise. The company is offering six months free for new participants as an inducement to try the platform.

Ultimately, Petkanics sees Livepeer creating a “token coordinating network” that incentivizes more compute power to join and match the needs of customers. Even more interestingly, the increasing need of particular video encoding algorithms means that there is an incentive for developers to add new functionality to the company’s open-source media server, creating a novel way to improve open source sustainability.

Petkanics and Tang have previously worked together with Jordan Cooper on Wildcard, a redesign of the mobile browser that had previously raised $10 million led by General Catalyst. Before that, they worked together at Hyperpublic, which developed databases of local information with an API for developers that sold to Groupon in 2012. Livepeer has 12 employees, with half based in New York City, and half distributed.

In addition to Northzone, Digital Currency Group, Libertus, Collaborative Fund, Notation Capital, Compound, North Island, and StakeZero joined the round.

Popular short-form video app TikTok has been slowly ramping up its advertising strategy this year as it increases its focus on monetization. However, the company still generates a smaller of its revenue from in-app purchases — and that number hit a high of $9 million in May, according to a report from Sensor Tower. That represents 500% year-over-year growth from the $1.5 million spent in May 2018, and 22% growth from April’s $7.4 million.

Arguably, TikTok’s hasn’t put much emphasis on its in-app purchase strategy. For now, the Beijing-based app owned by ByteDance is more heavily focused on driving user growth. It knows that putting some of its best features behind a paywall could potentially limit user adoption and engagement — especially as TikTok looks for growth in emerging markets like India, where it recently said it has 200 million users, 120 million who are monthly actives.

In India, the app overtook Facebook as the most downloaded social networking app in the first quarter of the year, and is now looking to pull in more advertisers. The Economic Times recently reported brands like Pepsi, Snapdeal, Myntra, Shaadi.com, and Shopclues have signed on to advertise.

Meanwhile, Indian users only accounted for half a percent of in-app purchases — just around $45,000, said Sensor Tower.

The lack of spending points to how little TikTok has focused on virtual goods. Instead of offering its video effects or filters for purchase, TikTok’s coins are used for buying gifts which can be sent to live streamers to show support.

Despite TikTok’s inattention to its virtual goods strategy, iOS users in China spent $5.9 million, of the total $9 million spent on in-app purchases in May, accounting for nearly 65% of purchases. In the U.S., both iOS and Android users spent a combined nearly $2 million, or 22%, of the app’s gross revenue.

TikTok’s installs are continuing to climb, Sensor Tower also noted.

In May, around 56 million users worldwide installed the app for the first time — a 27% increase over April. However, new installs were down by 21% from January’s 70.8 million. To some extent, India’s brief ban on the app impacted these figures — the app likely lost a potential 15 million new users in April, Sensor Tower had earlier estimated.

To date, TikTok has seen 1.2 billion installs, up from a billion at the end of last year. This figure doesn’t equate to active user numbers, however. On that front, TikTok said last summer it has 500 million monthly actives, and hasn’t publicly shared an updated number since. Life-to-date user spending is currently at $97.4 million, with the app expected to pass the $100 million milestone this month, the new report said.

Last fall, Walmart announced a joint venture with Eko to create interactive storytelling — think Netflix’s Black Mirror: Bandersnatch — for both entertainment and retail. Since then, Eko has been working with BuzzFeed on a range of interactive videos, as well as on projects for Walmart’s Vudu and others for its own HelloEko.com video site. Today, Eko’s latest partner has been unveiled: millennial-focused digital media company, Refinery29.

According to Variety, which first reported the news, Eko will produce several series based on Refinery29’s content, starting with an interactive scripted project for the site’s “Money Diaries” personal finance column, podcast, and book. The online series saw 7 million uniques in 2018 and is one of Refinery29’s top properties, the report noted.

In the Eko videos, viewers will be able to make choices about how to manage and spend the character’s money. Other Eko-produced Refinery29 shows will include the unscripted travel series 60 Second Cities and another focused on women’s living spaces, Sweet Digs. 

The shows will debut on Refinery29’s website by year-end, and will be promoted across social media. Eko and Refinery29 will share in the advertising and sponsorship revenues the series generate.

Because Eko’s videos allow viewers to make choices, media companies can learn from what viewers click on to better tailor their content to the viewer’s interests. Videos can also become more personalized to the viewer’s individual needs — in BuzzFeed’s case, for example, a recipe video could show how to customize the dish for dietary restrictions. This same set of advantages will be translated to Refinery29’s properties, as well.

Walmart invested $250 million into its joint venture with Eko last fall, with the aim of developing all sorts of interactive content, from toy catalogs to cooking shows, Reuters noted at the time.

In addition to the BuzzFeed and Refinery29 series, Eko is working with Hollywood producers on its other projects, including the Duplass Brothers, Fine Brothers, Nora Kirkpatrick, and others, and plans to delve into fashion, beauty, and other scripted content in the future.

Ahead of the public launch of Apple’s revamped suite of first-party apps on iOS 13, the company has rolled out a new version of its popular video editor, iMovie for iOS. With the app’s most recent update, iMovie has received a host of new features — most notably, support for a green screen effect that lets you remove the background from clips, as well as the addition of 80 new soundtracks across a variety of genres.

The green screen support, in particular, could make iMovie a better competitor to the third-party video editors which tend to offer more advanced feature sets, while also keeping things simple for less savvy users.

Apple says users of the new version (2.2.7) will be able to remove backgrounds from any clips shot in front of a blue or green screen, as well as adjust the clip with a 4-point mask and strength slider.

Its 80 new soundtracks include genres like pop, chill and sentimental that will automatically adjust to the length of the movie.

In terms of new effects, iMovie will now allow users to add photos as overlays to create picture-in-picture and split screen effects as well as opt to hide the border on those. These were some of iMovie’s more requested features, in fact, and one of the reasons why people went elsewhere for video editing apps.

Other new features are designed to make iMovie easier to use. For example, when you switch back to the iOS app from other applications, it will take you right to the edit screen of your project. It has also tucked away access to iMovie Theater from the three-dot ( … ) more menu, as it’s shifting users to share videos to iCloud instead.

And, as part of other classroom-focused updates, iMovie now supports ClassKit, which means students can deliver their video assignments directly the teachers via Apple’s Schoolwork app.

Because iMovie is designed to work across Apple’s platforms, users can begin editing projects on their phone then transfer them to other devices like the iPad or Mac in order to complete edits, including those that may benefit from working via a larger screen — such as the green screen effect or color corrections, for example.

The updated iMovie is available for both iPhone and iPad from the App Store.

In a previous life, John Underkoffler spent his days in Los Angeles dreaming up all of the possible ways men and machines would interact as a science adviser on films like Minority Report.

Now, he designs those systems for the real world through his company Oblong Industries, which has labored to create a full stack of collaborative tools for business users that are every bit as high-tech as the one’s Underkoffler dreamt for the silver screen.

The first bolt in the quiver of tools that Underkoffler began building out over the course of 15 years spent at MIT’s Media Lab was Mezzanine. A multipurpose collaborative platform that allowed business users to share documents and interact in real time through a powerful combination of videoconferencing hardware and software.

In the age of Zoom though, Oblong’s tools have become more lightweight, and the company is steadily adding multi-share capabilities to platforms other than its own. That new gaggle of collaboration tools launched under the moniker of Rumpus, and Oblong has been partnering with different video services to add its services to their own.

The latest to get the Rumpus treatment is Cisco Webex.  Now Cisco’s videoconferencing customers will get access to Rumpus’ personal cursors that point and emphasize content on shared screens, presence indicators to show who is looking where and at what, and emoji reactions to provide feedback without disrupting the flow of a meeting.

The company’s tools enable all of the users in a meeting to share their screens without competing for screen time.

“We’ve worked closely with Cisco over the last year to bring the capabilities of our flagship product, Mezzanine, to the Cisco suite of enterprise solutions for meetings paces. So as we completed Oblong’s own set of content-first collaboration offerings by building out Rumpus for pure-virtual work, it was obvious that Webex should be among the first conferencing solutions to be directly integrated,” said Underkoffler in a statement. “We’re thrilled to bring . the next level of engagement and productivity to millions of Webex users when their meetings require more than basic video and messaging.”

Rumpus is currently available for free to Mac computer users with Windows support coming soon.

Facebook today announced a series of changes to the way it ranks videos on its social network, which determines how widely they’re distributed. According to the updated guidelines, Facebook will now prioritize videos that focus on original content, those where users are engaged for longer periods of time, and those where users return repeatedly to watch more.

The company wants to feature more high-quality videos, and less of those that feature “unoriginal or repurposed content” from other sources where there’s been little value added, it says. That seems to imply a bit of crackdown on the prolific video memes — those that lift someone else’s content (sometimes without proper credit) and then publish it to their own Page to cash in.

Facebook says it’s also now going to demote videos from Pages that are involved in Sharing Schemes. These are programs run by unethical content mills which compensate other Page owners for posting content and running ads to promote it.

In addition, Facebook will reward videos that have a more engaged and loyal fanbase.

Before, Facebook encouraged video creators to keep their viewers watching for at least a minute. Going forward, it will actively add more weight in rankings to those videos where viewers watch for at least three minutes.

And it will reward videos where viewers repeatedly return to watch week after week.

The goal with the changes is to promote those videos that people value, the company says, while also helping great video creators reach more people across the social network by way of improved distribution.

The changes come at a time when Facebook’s video effort, Facebook Watch, is facing increased competition for viewers’ time and interest from a range of players, including Apple’s streaming service Apple TV+, as well as number of places to watch free, ad-supported content, like The Roku Channel or Amazon’s IMDb, for example, in addition to, of course, YouTube. And soon, the highly anticipated streaming service from Disney will eat into more of viewers’ time, too.

Facebook Watch has also been dinged for featuring low-quality content compared to newcomers like Apple TV+, which has signed big-name talent like Spielberg, Witherspoon, and Oprah. Meanwhile, Facebook Watch has focused on things like MTV’s The Real World or Buffy re-runs in terms of its “premium” content.

With YouTube recently promising its own original content will become free and ad-supported in time, Facebook needed to keep up by making its own video site less meme-filled and more engaging than before. That can only happen if it promotes videos when they meet certain quality thresholds — which is what these guidelines aim to address.

The Gillmor Gang — Doc Searls, Michael Markman, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor . Recorded live Thursday April 25, 2019. Streamed live to Twitter, or just slightly after the fact. Luminary and the podcast wars, @jack, and the Democrats in the Age of Bidenomics.

Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor

@dsearls, @mickeleh, @kteare, @stevegillmor, @gillmorgang

Liner Notes

Live chat stream

The Gillmor Gang on Facebook

Just days after Google and Amazon buried the hatchet over their longstanding streaming feud, Google has made another interesting inroad in its bid to bring yet more ubiquity to its YouTube-based premium video efforts. Today, Verizon (which owns TechCrunch) and the search giant announced a new partnership where Verizon customers will be able to subscribe to YouTube TV through their accounts to watch “on whatever platform they choose,” in the words of Erin McPheron, Verizon’s head of content strategy and acquisition.

That will mean, in Verizon terms, getting a YouTube TV stream if you are a 5G wireless home customer as part of an internet bundle, or as part of your Fios subscription if you are a customer of Verizon’s fiber-optic TV, telephone and internet service. It sounds like there will be other options to come. “Verizon will also offer unique, high-value YouTube TV promotions to customers across platforms,” the company added.

YouTube TV is an all-in-one bundle that essentially replaces the kinds of packages offered by cable TV providers that includes some 70 networks such as ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC, cable channels like HGTV, Food Network, TNT, TBS, CNN, ESPN, FX and on-demand video, which also includes DVR options for each of the six accounts that comes with a subscription, along with recommendation algorithms (similar to Netflix’s) for each viewer. It looks like the YouTube TV offer will sit alongside other bundles that Verizon already offers to users, for example see these action/entertainment, kids and sports/news bundles of channels on Fios. Fios also offers new customers one free year of Netflix.

The deal underscores Verizon’s ongoing efforts to play nice with third-party content providers to continue enhancing the array of services that consumers have to choose from at Verizon. More options helps sweeten the deal and keep people from moving to other services, or away from any bundles at all and opting to create their own a la carte selections, cord-cutter style.

This is especially important as it continues to build out its next-generation 5G wireless network and looks for more subscribers and usage of it. In its earnings report earlier today, Verizon reported that it was investing some $4.3 billion in capex in the first quarter of the year to build out that 5G network, which is in part meant to help optimise video traffic over wireless networks.

“Our network and technology leadership uniquely positions us to lead the content revolution, which centers around choice for our customers,” said McPherson in a statement. “As we pave the path forward on 5G, we’ll continue to bring our customers options and access to premium content by teaming up with the best providers in the industry and leveraging our network as-a service strategy. We were first in the world to bring commercial 5G to our customers and now another first on the content front as we offer our customers access to YouTube TV on whatever platform they choose.”

For Google, it gives the company — in hot competition with a number of other over-the-top streaming providers like Amazon and Netflix and Apple — one more route to reaching consumers wherever they happen to be already, and whether they are watching on a mobile phone or a TV in their living rooms. It’s not clear in the release, but it would be interesting to know if Verizon provides preferred bandwidth to a service as part of the partnership that would improve the quality of the stream.

As a point of comparison, last week Google said that YouTube users on Fire TV will be able to sign in, have full access to their library and play videos in 4K HDR at 60 fps on supported devices.

It’s not clear what kind of pricing Verizon will offer for YouTube TV, which costs $49.99 per month in the US for new customers.

“YouTube TV has become known for its best-in-class user experience that enhances the way users watch live TV today,” said Heather Rivera, global head of product partnerships at YouTube, in a statement. “With this partnership, we’re making it simple and seamless for Verizon’s customers to sign up to enjoy YouTube TV on-the-go on their mobile phones or tablets or at home on their big screen devices.”

We’ll update this post as we learn more.

Wasting time every night debating with yourself or your partner about what to watch on Netflix is a drag. It burns people’s time and good will, robs great creators of attention, and leaves Netflix vulnerable to competitors who can solve discovery. Netflix itself says the average user spends 18 minutes per day deciding.

To date, Netflix’s solution has been its state-of-the-art artificial intelligence that offers personalized recommendations. But that algorithm is ignorant of how we’re feeling in the moment, what we’ve already seen elsewhere, and if we’re factoring in what someone else with us wants to watch too.

Netflix is considering a Shuffle button. [Image Credit: AndroidPolice]

Here are three much more exciting, applicable, and lucrative ways for Netflix (or Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, or any of the major streaming services) to get us to stop browsing and start chilling:

Netflix Channels

For the history of broadcast television, people surfed their way to what to watch. They turned on the tube, flipped through a few favorite channels, and jumped in even if a show or movie had already started. They didn’t have to decide between infinite options, and they didn’t have to commit to starting from the beginning. We all have that guilty pleasure we’ll watch until the end whenever we stumble upon it.

Netflix could harness that laziness and repurpose the concept of channels so you could surf its on-demand catalog the same way. Imagine if Netflix created channels dedicated to cartoons, action, comedy, or history. It could curate non-stop streams of cherry-picked content, mixing classic episodes and films, new releases related to current events, thematically relevant seasonal video, and Netflix’s own Original titles it wants to promote.

For example, the comedy channel could run modern classic films like 40-Year Old Virgin and Van Wilder during the day, top episodes of Arrested Development and Parks And Recreation in the afternoon, a featured recent release film like The Lobster in primetime, and then off-kilter cult hits like Monty Python or its own show Big Mouth in the late night slots. Users who finish one video could get turned on to the next, and those who might not start a personal favorite film from the beginning might happily jump in at the climax.

Short-Film Bundles

There’s a rapidly expanding demographic of post-couple pre-children people desperately seeking after-work entertainment. They’re too old or settled to go out every night, but aren’t so busy with kids that they lack downtime.

But one big shortcoming of Netflix is that it can be tough to get a satisfying dose of entertainment in a limited amount of time before you have to go to bed. A 30-minute TV show is too short. A lot of TV nowadays is serialized so it’s incomprehensible or too cliffhanger-y to watch a single episode, but sometimes you can’t stay up to binge. And movies are too long so you end up exhausted if you manage to finish in one sitting.

Netflix could fill this gap by bundling three or so short films together into thematic collections that are approximately 45 minutes to an hour in total.

Netflix could commission Originals and mix them with the plethora of untapped existing shorts that have never had a mainstream distribution channel. They’re often too long or prestigious to live on the web, but too short for TV, and it’s annoying to have to go hunting for a new one every 15 minutes. The whole point here is to reduce browsing. Netflix could create collections related to different seasons, holidays, or world news moments, and rebundle the separate shorts on the fly to fit viewership trends or try different curational angles.

Often artful and conclusive, they’d provide a sense of culture and closure that a TV episode doesn’t. If you get sleepy you could save the last short, and there’s a feeling of low commitment since you could skip any short that doesn’t grab you.

The Nightly Water Cooler Pick

One thing we’ve lost with the rise of on-demand video are some of those zeitgeist moments where everyone watches the same thing the same night and can then talk about it together the next day. We still get that with live sports, the occasional tent pole premier like Game Of Thrones, or when a series drops for binge-watching like Stranger Things. But Netflix has the ubiquity to manufacture those moments that stimulate conversation and a sense of unity.

Netflix could choose one piece of programming per night per region, perhaps a movie, short arc of TV episodes, or one of the short film bundles I suggested above and stick it prominently on the home page. This Netflix Zeitgeist choice would help override people’s picky preferences that get them stuck browsing by applying peer pressure like, “well, this is what everyone else will be watching.”

Netflix’s curators could pick content matched with an upcoming holiday like a Passover TV episode, show a film that’s reboot is about to debut like Dune or Clueless, pick a classic from an actor that’s just passed away like Luke Perry in the original Buffy movie, or show something tied to a big event like Netflix is currently doing with Beyonce’s Coachella concert film. Netflix could even let brands and or content studios pay to have their content promoted in the Zeitgeist slot.

As streaming service competition heats up and all the apps battle for the best back catalog, it’s not just exclusives but curation and discovery that will set them apart. These ideas could make Netflix the streaming app where you can just turn it on to find something great, be exposed to gorgeous shorts you’d have never known about, or get to participate in a shared societal experience. Entertainment shouldn’t have to be a chore.

After receiving a flogging from privacy critics, Facebook is scrambling to make its smart display video chat screen Portal more attractive to buyers. Today Facebook is announcing the addition a of a web browser, plus some of Messenger’s Instant Games like Battleship, Draw Something, Sudoku, and Words With Friends. ABC News and CNN are adding content to Portal, which now also has a manual zoom mode for its auto-zooming smart camera so you can zero in on a particular thing in view. Facebook has also added new augmented reality Story Time tales, seasonal AR masks, in-call music sharing through iHeartRadio beyond Spotify and Pandora that already offer it, and nickname calling so you can say “Hey Portal, call Mom.”

But the question remains who’s buying? Facebook is already discounting the 10-inch screen Portal and 15-inch Portal+. Formerly $100 off if you buy two, Facebook is still offering $50 off just one until Christmas Eve as part of a suspiciously long Black Friday Sale. That doesn’t signal this thing is flying off the shelves. We don’t have sales figures, but Portal has a 3.4 rating on Amazon while Portal+ has a 3.6 — both trailing the 4.2 rating of Amazon’s own Echo Shows 2. Users are griping about the lack of Amazon Video support for Ring doorbells, not receiving calls, and of course the privacy implications.

Personally, I’ve found Portal+ to be competent in the five weeks since launch. The big screen is great as a smart photo frame and video calls look great. But Alexa and Facebook’s own voice assistant have a tough time dividing up functionality, and sometimes I can’t get either to play a specific song on Spotify, pause or change volume, or other activities my Google Home has no trouble with. Facebook said it was hoping to add Google Assistant to Portal but there’s no progress on that front yet.

The browser will be a welcome addition, and allow Facebook to sidestep some of the issues around its thin app platform. While it recently added a Smart TV version of YouTube, now users can access lots of services without those developers having to commit to building something for Portal given its uncertain future.

The hope seems to be that mainstream users who aren’t glued to the tech press where Facebook is constantly skewered might be drawn in by these device’s flashy screens and the admittedly impressive auto-zooming camera. But to overcome the brand tax levied by all of Facebook’s privacy scandals, Portal must be near perfect. Without the native apps for popular video providers like Netflix and Hulu, consistent voice recognition, and more unique features missing from competing smart displays, the fear of Facebook’s surveillance may be outweighing people’s love for shiny new gadgets.

YouTube on Monday announced a significant change to its mobile app – it will now autoplay videos by default when users are browsing the app’s home page, aka the “Home” tab. Fortunately, the videos will not autoplay with the sound enabled, the company says. Instead, the feature is meant to give users a preview of the video while scrolling through the Home section, so they can better decide if it’s something they want to watch.

The feature, which YouTube calls “Autoplay on Home,” is enabled by default. However, the app will introduce settings that will allow users to control their experience. Users can opt to turn the feature off entirely, if they choose, or they can opt to have autoplay only enabled when they’re connected to a Wi-Fi network.

Autoplay for Home is not an entirely new feature. It’s actually been up-and-running for over half a year for YouTube Premium members on Android. Premium is YouTube’s subscription offering, which removes the ads from YouTube while also offering other perks like downloads for offline access to videos, background play, and access to YouTube Music and YouTube Originals.

Starting this week, Autoplay on Home is rolling out beyond Premium subscribers to all those who use the YouTube app on iOS and Android. As with most launches across YouTube, it’s a staged rollout – meaning you may not see autoplay immediately. YouTube says it will take a few weeks for the rollout to complete.

The company notes it made the decision to expand autoplay because it increases users’ engagement time with videos.

As YouTube explains in an announcement on its product forum (spotted first by Tubefilter): “previewing videos helps you make more informed decisions about whether you want to watch a video, leading to longer engagement with videos you choose to watch.”

The company also detailed its decision further in a YouTube Help video (embedded below) where it noted that autoplay’s launch doesn’t mean thumbnails are going away. Instead, YouTube will display the thumbnail first during a brief pause, before the video begins to autoplay.

With the launch of autoplay, YouTube also noted that captions would become more important.

Today, the number of videos with captions enabled tops 2 billion, it said. The site offers a variety of options for captions, including automated captions (which aren’t always perfect), creator-uploaded captions, and crowdsourced community captions.

It’s not surprising to see YouTube adopt autoplay, given that rivals including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and others already do the same, as do some streaming services, like Netflix.

User reaction, following YouTube’s announcement on Twitter, has been mixed. Some people said they were looking forward to the feature, while others lamented that it’s now just another setting they have to turn off.

Facebook hasn’t had a hit show yet for its long-form video hub Watch, so it’s got a new plan: digging up some deceased cult favorites from television. First up, Facebook is making all episodes of Joss Whedon’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly free on Facebook Watch. There’ll be simultaneous viewing Watch Parties where fans can live comment together for Buffy at 3 pm PT today, Angel tomorrow at 12 pm PT, and Firefly on sunday at 12pm PT. Facebook recruited Buffy star Sarah Michelle Gellar to promote the launch.

These shows aren’t original, and they’re far from exclusive since they’re included in a Hulu subscription and are available to rent or buy on other platforms. But at least they’re not run-of-the-mill web content.Wwith Facebook’s remake of MTV’s Real World not arriving until Spring 2019, these sci-fi and horror shows are the most high-profile programs available on the free ad-supported streaming service. The hope is that fans of these shows will come get a taste of Watch, and then explore the rest of its programming.

However, Facebook downplayed this as a change is overarching strategy when I asked if it would be licensing more old TV shows. Instead, it’s trying to build a well-rounded mix of content. A Facbook spokesperson provided this statement:

“No – this doesn’t reflect a strategy shift. We’re focused on bringing content to Watch that people want to discuss and create a community around — whether that’s live sports like UEFA Champions League in Latin America, compelling shows like Sorry For Your Loss, Queen America and Sacred Lies, or even nostalgia content like Real World reboot we’re bringing to Watch next year. Buffy, Firefly and Angel are pop culture favorites with dedicated fan bases, and we’re excited for the opportunity to bring these shows back in a way that enables fans to watch and discuss together on the same platform.”

There’s no guarantee Whedon fans will flock to Watch in droves. [TechCrunch owner] Verizon tried the same thing, bringing Veronica Mars and Babylon 5 to its Go90 streaming service. That failed to move the needle and Go90 eventually shut down. Meanwhile, Watch Party’s simultaneous viewing hasn’t blossomed into a phenomenon, but perhaps bringing the feature to Messenger (which TechCrunch reports Facebook is internally testing) could more naturally spur these social consumption experiences.

Watch has made some progress sicne its lackluster August 2017 debut. 50 million people now spend at least 1 minute per month with Watch. For comparison, over 18 Snapchat Shows have over 10 million unique viewers per month. Facebook Watch users spend 5X longer watching than on clips discovered News Feed videos. But Facebook Watch really needs to pour the cash in necessary to secure a tent-pole series — its Game Of Thrones or House Of Cards. That might mesh well with its new strategy of conceding the younger audience that’s abandon Facebook in favor targeting older users, CNBC reported.

With so much free video content floating around and plenty of people already subscribing to Netflix, Hulu, and/or HBO, it’s been tough for Watch to gain traction when it’s so far outside the understood Facebook use case. Laying a bed of diverse content is a good baby step, but it needs something truly must-see if it’s going to wedge its way into our viewing habits.