Facebook is now encouraging users to upload their videos directly to the social network rather than uploading them to YouTube and posting a link. The company has been aggressively expanding its share of the video-sharing market these past few months and this most recent move is probably Facebook’s most direct attack against YouTube. Trying to post a link to a YouTube video now brings up a warning that suggests uploading the video to Facebook instead.
Facebook is very keen to be a serious alternative to YouTube. Over the last year it’s grown views to over 4 billion per day, launched a revenue sharing scheme for creators and started autoplaying videos in your Newsfeed. A few tweaks we’ve noticed quietly being tested show just how eager Facebook is to stop you going to YouTube for video. When you try to paste a YouTube link onto a page, you’ll see a tiny warning below the share box encouraging you to upload to Facebook instead. It teases higher impressions and the ability to track videos as a reason to do so. The social network also rolled out a major upgrade to its video uploader yesterday that shows just how serious it is about becoming a major video player. It now offers options for disabling embedding, adding categories and sharing as an ‘unlisted’ video — just like YouTube.
