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Time to re-read Fahrenheit 451?
Facebook is predicting the end of the written word
Grunt, groan, sad face, sigh: Facebook exec says written word soon obsolete - Chicago Tribune
Facebook is predicting the end of the written word
Facebook is predicting the end of the written word on its platform.
In five years time Facebook “will be definitely mobile, it will be probably all video,” said Nicola Mendelsohn, who heads up Facebook’s operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, at a conference in London this morning. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, has already noted that video will be more and more important for the platform.
But Mendelsohn went further, suggesting that stats showed the written word becoming all but obsolete, replaced by moving images and speech. “The best way to tell stories in this world, where so much information is coming at us, actually is video,” Mendelsohn said. “It conveys so much more information in a much quicker period. So actually the trend helps us to digest much more information.”
Grunt, groan, sad face, sigh: Facebook exec says written word soon obsolete - Chicago Tribune
Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg has reason to be enthusiastic about growing video on the site, providing monetary incentives for media companies to post live streams and clips. (Hint: Facebook is pushing autoplay video ads hard.) But video is only sometimes the most efficient way to convey information. . . . Sitting through a speech takes a lot longer than reading the prepared remarks. . . . Words scan faster than videos, at least for now. True, the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year for 2015 was not a word at all. It was the emoji formally known as "Face With Tears of Joy."
Facebook reportedly has been algorithmically favoring video posts of late, though the company says user preferences are driving the shift away from text. Whatever the cause, the numbers are dramatic. Mendelsohn said Facebook has gone from 1 billion daily video views to 8 billion in a year's time.
"I just think if we look already, we're seeing a year-on-year decline on text, we're seeing a massive increase, as I've said, on pictures and video," Mendelsohn said. "If I was having a bet, I would say: video, video, video."