On November 17th, 2017, Facebook has temporarily removed one of its biggest page: UNILAD. Fortunately it reappeared later on. But in France, Firerank a pure media player has been definitely deleted. It had more than 1.7 million video views and 12 million fans. Also 35 employees.

The reason: Firerank did not respect certain terms and good practices such as “like jacking”. We will not debate here on the legitimacy the decision, but at the end, Firerank will probably will go bankrupt.

Firerank had built its audience and notoriety on Facebook. Their 12 million fans were indeed “virtual” fans, who belonged (in fact) to Facebook. An audience “dissolved” in a few hours.

Worse, Facebook is currently testing to remove organically pages publications from our feeds. This led to some Pages receiving 4X less engagement than before. The idea behind: if you want to be visible, you’ll have to pay ! (yes even if your brand or page have already many many fans).

All new media and pure players built on Facebook, or even those who build their entire promotion strategy on Facebook like Buzzfeed, Minutebuzz or Huffington Post could be impacted by these new policy.

SAME FOR YOUTUBE, INSTAGRAM AND CONSORTS

Obviously, corollary, this will extend to all platforms owned by GAFA. And Youtube first.

To all youtubers who have build a large community of subscribers for years: what will you do if YouTube decides to close your channel? ? ? ?

Of course if you have more than 50 million fans like PewDiePie, you do not risk anything. But for the overwhelming majority of youtubers, the ten or so hundreds of thousands of subscribers represent a long-term job, and the only value they own.

Just ask you this simple question: if your Facebook / Youtube / Instagram / Snapchat account would close, how would you rebuild your community?

You will not.

Simply because you have no tangible data about them. Do you have their email address? their phone? Do you know how they consume what content? What each of them like most or least? We’ve said this before: data is the future of the media (why do you think GAFA kept this data if not?)

If you’re a video content creator, this is the same issue if you distribute your content on Youtube, iTunes, Amazon, Netflix …

These intermediaries keep for themselves the real value of this market : knowledge on the audience. And of course, they know everything: tastes, email addresses, physical address, consumer uses, bank card etc …

YOU ARE NOT AT HOME ON THESE PLATFORMS, SO BUILD YOUR OWN HOME (I.E YOUR OWN VIDEO PLATFORM).

Yes, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram are very important tools for promotion. You can be discovered by an interested audience, because there are a lot of traffic, the communities are flourishing, you can get visibility and become famous (even ephemeral) with a buzz.

But keep in mind that you provide the content to a platform that dictates its own rules. If these rules suddenly change (monetization, algorithm, etc …), you will be powerless (even the most powerful Youtubers tried, without any success).

As a content creator, you are somehow just a “tenant” in a precarious position. You just rent a place somewhere on these platforms, and when it will be about driving you out one day, it will be without notice.

Once we have said that, what can we do?

Needless to leave these platforms, this is not the point here. Keep your “spot” cause the location is nice, but build your own house = your platform.

Your own ecosystem that you control completely: your audience, your data, your model of monetization, your user experience etc…

Better: want to have your cake and eat it? ? Yes? You can have it!

What do I mean? I mean finding a qualified audience on these platforms AND bring them back to your house (your video platform). What’d say?

That’s exactly what we are trying to create, day after day, with our solutions: OKAST and FlameFy :

• Allowing you to create your own video ecosystem (no dependence on a GAFA, no content other than those that you want to broadcast)
• Helping you to build your audience, through social networks, and giving them a safe place, where they can continue to follow you, and enjoy your work, whatever Facebook or Youtube’s future new rules!

Create a streaming platform or VOD site today, in a few clicks, to offer your content and start building your REAL audience.

And for those who want to develop their audience and visibility, we have automated tools on FlameFy that directs you. Contact us to find out more: info@flamefy.com!