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Facebook Partners Media Firms Like BuzzFeed to Back "Live"

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Facebook Inc. is leaving no stone unturned to boost its Live video platform. As per The Wall Street Journal report, the social media service has signed nearly 140 deals worth $50 million with several media firms and celebrities to churn out live video content for its platform.

Per the report, among the media firms, Facebook’s deal with BuzzFeed for $3.05 million is the biggest. BuzzFeed will be paid for delivering video content for the period from Mar 2016 to 2017. There are as many as 17 deals worth over $1 million including deals with The New York Times and CNN for $3.03 million and $2.5 million, respectively. Huffington Post, Vox Media and Mashable have also partnered with Facebook.

Facebook has also brought on board several celebrities like actor Kevin Hart, Chef Gordon Ramsay and Indian American author Deepak Chopra.

The report quoted Facebook’s VP of global operation Justin Osofsky saying “we wanted to invite a broad set of partners so we could get feedback from a variety of different organisation about what works and what doesn’t.”

Facebook is trying to tap the opportunity presented by ever increasing video viewing on social media platforms. Online video is the most lucrative component of digital advertising. As video ads generate more revenues than its photo and text based counterparts, Facebook is trying to incorporate more and more video oriented content to bring in more ad dollars. Moreover, it is the “live” feature that is emerging as a terrific opportunity. Facebook also added that an initial survey found that people reacted 10 times more to a live video than regular videos. Research firm, Forrester Research projects digital ad revenues to touch $12.6 billion by 2019.

Facebook noted that there has been a threefold jump in creation and sharing of new videos by users. Recently, the company expanded Facebook Live to all users and not just celebrities and added a number of new features. These include enabling broadcast for a Group or Event and at the same time allowing the audience to respond to the live broadcast in real time through Live Reactions (same as in the news feed Reactions).

Though Facebook is trying to expand into video viewing, the arena is marked by stiff competition. Alphabet’s (GOOGL - Free Report) YouTube is the dominant player in this field. Also, Snapchat and Twitter’s Periscope are names to reckon with in the video space.

At present, Facebook sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). Another stock worth considering is NetEase, Inc. (NTES - Free Report) , which carries the same rank as Facebook.

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