If you believe the latest headlines today, Facebook and gaming "journalists" would have you believe the age of Twitch and Youtube are over after Facebook reached a deal with ESL(e-sports league), this has been in the works for months now since last may, but it has now finally gone through with many people saying this is going to be a "corporate bloodbath" which will see Facebook taking the crown from Youtube and Twitch, this obviously paid advertisement at this point, or people really are retarded, so I thought i'd break down what exactly is going to happen with Facebook entering the E-Sports Realm.
Lets dig in.
Facebook can't topple the kings.
Facebook, at it's best has a lukewarm reception in the world, with most people using it solely to connect with friends and share memes, CEO and creator Mark Zuckerberg is one of the most polarizing figures in the internet world, with a vocal majority actively telling him to go die and the others telling him to run for president, now this shouldn't have any effect on Facebook going into the streaming world right? wrong, it's basically everything and for Facebook, they aren't exactly the most positively viewed company.
Not to mention the platform as it stands couldn't possibly hope to be used as a streaming service, as it stands you can only stream in 720p to Facebook, so it would have to undergo some pretty serious work to be able to stream in 1080-4k, which ultimately means the layout of the site would change drastically and as we all know, whenever Facebook updates their page in a big way, it's months before it works properly, but regardless of design choice there's two big reasons that Facebook can't possibly hope to outdo Twitch and Youtube.
Twitch and Youtube are built for this.
The big difference between Youtube,Twitch and Facebook is that Twitch and YT are built from the ground up to support videos and streaming, where as Facebook has been rebuilt over the past decade to incorporate these things, just getting an ESL deal isn't going to put you automatically at the top, gamers and stream followers aren't fans of companies, they're fans of the streamers themselves, if the majority of streamers were on Myspace, that's where the traffic would go, Facebook simply announcing that they've got a contract with ESL won't give them the results they're looking for.
As I said above, Facebook is not built for this type of streaming service, ideally it could be eventually but at the moment it's not and as we've seen a hundred times with companies given things they're not prepared for, they'll ultimately make a god damn mess out of the platform and scare off any business they're bringing in, but these aren't the only things that are going to exclude Facebook from being a major player in the video game streaming world.
The consumers already have all they need.
Leave it to Mark Zuckerberg to try and fill a market that is already filled to the brim, between Youtube and Twitch, Online streaming for gaming is at its peak, Twitch can be logged onto with a button and you can find 1000's of live streams and Youtube have 10's of millions of videos and thousands of live streams daily, there's no reason for people to go outside those two mediums, yet Facebook is attempting to do it anyway, it's destined to fail though as there's a reason those 2 platforms won against all others, they're built for efficiency and they're very efficient at what they do.
Sure Facebook might be able to break into the market somewhat, but people are trying to tout this as a hostile takeover, like millions of people are just going to flock from Youtube/Twitch to Facebook to watch streaming when they're happy where they are, also given the fact that Facebook has stolen potentially billions of dollars in original content, how are they going to go about giving a better incentive to streamers than twitch or youtube already does? it really doesn't make any sense for them to try and break into this market as going in, it's going to be an uphill battle.
I understand healthy competition, but this isn't competition, this is a 2 man race where a third guy runs onto the track and tells everyone hes in the match, the only problem is here, you can't ignore him as he keeps trying to trip the other two up and tell people about how great he is, this is going to be a problem going forward regardless, as you know Facebook, they don't accept things as failures, they just find another way to get around them and I wouldn't be surprised in a few months if we see "Facebook Premium" that charges you to watch exclusive streams and the like, there's nothing really good about this at all, but again, just my opinion.
A Sobering Thought.
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With Facebook's proclivity for Ads, this could end up being a bad thing, seeing as whoever has the most money on offer, gets the contract, Facebook has the money to throw at this as well as flooding streams with ads and sponsored streams, this also ties into Facebook who actively punish people they don't agree with and will often times severely negate the reach of certain people, given time Facebook will become the worst version of twitch possible, an endless sea of people trying to get recognized over(and don't take offense to this) the worst kinds of streamers, you know the ones, the 80% of the screen is her facecam on her tits "streamer" the "I yell at video games and get angry" streamer and the ones who get propped up by others to be big(sorta like steemit).
It has a potential to rewrite the streaming world, even though it's a very slim chance, there's just too many variables when it comes to an insidious company like Facebook, it has the potential to go really wrong and ultimately fuck us over because of it, again this is just spit balling but iv'e seen crazier things happen when a load of money is involved and given that Facebook has essentially "bought" the ESL exclusivity for streaming events, how long before they end up strangling our wallets for cash for something we used to have for free?
Only time will tell here, but either way, it's not good news coming from Facebook, and it never really is.