Facebook is predicting the end of the written word

Facebook’s video push threatens the edited TV news package as much as it threatens the written word.

I’ve definitely noticed a difference in traffic when I post a YouTube video (which generally gets modest attention on FB but often accumulates views over time) vs when I post similar content directly within Facebook (which FB seems to promote more quickly, but which disappears into the memory hole about 24 hours later, replaced by fresher content). It’s no real trouble to post the same content in both places, but FB’s recent push for live videos is going to change what people expect to see in their feeds — raw, immediate footage, rather than traditional edited content (interviews with experts, establishing shots, text overlays, etc, all of which take time to create).

Indeed, Facebook has arguably made us all writers, since it has become the medium of choice for millions to share their views and life experiences. But in five years that creativity may look very different. 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. —Quartz